Super King Curved Woven Headboard and Footboard Bed in Natural Rattan

Head and foot both woven and both curved, which is the shape that makes a bed look like furniture rather than a mattress on a base.

Every piece here is woven by hand, which is not a marketing line but a description of the only way it can be done. Rattan cannot be machine woven around a curve, so a chair back is somebody sitting with a former and a bundle of soaked cane for most of a day. The consequence is that no two pieces are identical, that the binding at the joints varies slightly, and that a weave that is perfectly regular is usually a sign of extruded plastic rather than good workmanship.

Specification

• Dimensions: 1920mm wide by 2050mm long by 1200mm high at the head
• Seat or working height: mattress deck at 320mm, which suits a mattress up to 250mm deep
• Frame: solid hardwood rails and legs with a sprung slatted base
• Weave: hand woven headboard panel, close weave, on a bent rattan hoop
• Finish: natural rattan pole and peel, steam bent over a former and bound at every joint, finished in a clear matt lacquer that lets the cane keep its own colour
• Load rating: tested to 300kg distributed
• Indoor or outdoor: Indoors, or a covered veranda or conservatory that stays dry. Natural rattan is not garden furniture and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you a chair that will go grey, swell, split and unravel inside two seasons. If you want rattan outdoors you want woven polyethylene, which is a good product honestly described and something we do not sell.
• Assembly: Flat packed to keep the delivery sensible, about an hour with the spanner in the box. Frame joints are bolted through steel inserts, and the woven panels arrive already woven onto their frames rather than as something you have to assemble.
• Weight: approximately 92.2 kilograms
• Mattress size: super king, 1800 by 1900mm, not included
• Slats: sprung beech, 14 for a single and 28 for a double or larger
• Centre rail and legs on anything wider than a single
• Under bed clearance: 260mm, which takes a storage box
• Comes apart into the headboard, footboard, rails and slats for a move
• Headboard is removable for a move

What you get

• Headboard, footboard
• Side rails, centre rail and legs
• Sprung beech slats
• All fittings, a spanner and an allen key
• Felt pads and a care card

Care

Dust it with a soft brush rather than a cloth, because a cloth skates over the weave and a brush gets into it. Two or three times a year wipe it over with a barely damp cloth and let it dry away from a radiator. Rattan does not like being dry any more than it likes being wet, so a piece that lives next to a radiator or in a room with the heating on all winter will benefit from a light mist of water once a month, which sounds like an old wives' tale and is the single most useful thing anyone will tell you about it. If a strand lifts, do not pull it. Damp it, press it back and hold it with masking tape overnight.

Where it works

This is the piece people mean by coastal: pale, woven and light enough to move with one hand. It sits happily against white or off white walls and against the greens and warm neutrals that have replaced grey in most houses. In a room with a lot of hard surfaces it does the job that a rug does, which is to take the edge off the echo.