Want to add instant charm and texture to your interiors?
Wicker. Stop sniggering about rattan appendages, you at the back there.
I had a whole interiors post drafted about rattan and wicker and jute, and how much I love them for adding a hint of texture and warmth and tactility to a room. OK so they’re the sort of materials you don’t want to go too overboard on, unless you actually like living inside a house that is essentially made of kindling: but for very quickly adding texture and interest and giving things that undone feel?
Yes please.
And it doesn’t have to be all rustic and gingham-y either; rattan can be beautifully sculptural, case in point my linen basket which we will come back to shortly.
Anyway, since I drafted this post on wicker and rattan, which was a mere few weeks ago, the online world has been turned upside down by a certain movie trailer that has been released. A film starring Olivia Coleman, Alexander Skarsgård and Peter Dinklage, in which a woman (Coleman) gets herself a husband magically made and when he turns up for the wedding he’s entirely fabricated in wicker! Yeah, all of him!
ALL OF HIM. Rattan cock and all! Woven balls! And if you think I’m being crass and immature, wait until you see the trailer! Embedded (bit like the woman who married the wicker man, fnar fnar) for your viewing pleasure here:
I tell you, from here on in I shall not accept an erection unless it is accompanied by that tremendous creaking sound, rising noisily to full mast like an ancient oak.
How gloriously silly, I am in my absolute element with it all and have watched the trailer five times. How is it that someone has finally conceived of a film plot that is as depraved and farcical as my own imaginings? It’s almost as though I thought this storyline up myself. I fear it will be one of my life’s greatest disappointments, that Wicker wasn’t my own mad creation…
But to get back to the interiors stuff, my point is is that I drafted the below post on wicker things before the trailer came out and now that I’m editing it almost everything I say sounds like a double entendre and I’m having to cut bits of it out here, there and everywhere. (Especially phrases like “bulbous wicker bottom”.)
Enough stalling. Let’s be having it.
Some Rustic Jute and Wicker-y Stuff That’ll Add Texture and Charm to Almost Any Room
Since I am now on my (counts on fingers) fifth home renovation/restoration/interiors project I thought I’d share a little trick with you, one that has worked in every setting from my mid-century-modern-house-on-stilts to the most recent, an ancient rural cottage. It’s a very easily executed trick and also relatively inexpensive and it adds instant warmth, texture and interest.
I’m talking about using rattan and jute. Stay with me. We don’t have to go full-on with this stuff, don’t short-circuit yourselves over it, I just feel that these are materials that get massively overlooked and then, when you add them into a room, you realise they were just what you were missing.
The honeyed hue, the intensely tactile nature of it, but the fact that at the same time it’s delicate and doesn’t add bulk… I think it can look so brilliantly chic.
Take those big IKEA shelves as an example - I think they are called Kallax: we’ve all had them, or have them still, the units that are made up of large square holes that are actually quite useless for holding books and objects, unless you stack the books in like a Tetris game or have square objects or only read coffee table hardbacks.
To use them for anything remotely normal you have to procure yourself some of IKEA’s purpose-made boxes that are exactly the right size for the holes. And if you’ve ever seen one of those units filled with the plain fabric or cardboard boxes then you’ll know that it’s not a hugely attractive sight.
But have you ever seen a Kallax unit filled with the rattan baskets they also make?
Instantly a million times better. I say this as someone who has owned multiple Kallax units with nearly every combo of box and basket known to man. (Kallax are excellent for storing beauty samples. These days I have a vintage haberdasher’s unit with dozens of tiny drawers for my beauty storage and it looks amazing, but as a functional piece I have to say that it is totally shit.)
There’s something about the rattan that is pleasing and gentle on the eye, even when mass-produced and slightly clinical-looking, like the IKEA stuff - Minecraft Rattan. It’s the warmth, the weave, the way it breaks up a surface so that your eye doesn’t hit a solid wall of material…
And I’m not saying to rattan the absolute bejeezus out of everything, I just think that the odd hint of it is a useful trick for adding an extra layer of beauty. Or, for when you need storage solutions, and the alternative is - for eg - a plastic set of boxes for your dressing table to hold all of your makeup items, or a wastepaper bin that looks like something from the set of Severance.
Here are some of my favourite wickery rattan jute bits:
Ferm Living Braided Laundry Basket.
This is one of my favourite household possessions. I like it so much that I have banned my kids from getting inside it for hide and seek, thus depriving them of one of childhood’s greatest activities. (We used to climb into my Mum’s linen basket and then tip it over from the inside, so that we rolled across the floor in it. Tell me a better game on a rainy day.)
The shape of this linen basket is exquisite and it took me weeks to find this exact shape. I was trying to find a copy of a vintage one I have from the sixties that I bought via Vinterior from a dealer, the one that Rich started using TO STORE KINDLING IN which is why he now has holes cut into the toes of all of his socks.
Neptune Jute Rug.
I have a Neptune woven rug in my work cabin (above) and it looks the absolute business. It was expensive, but I can now declare that I have massive experience in jute rugs because I bought two cheaper ones for other rooms and the quality is annoyingly bad. The cheaper ones shed all over the place and already have pulls in them, don’t have any backing on them and will undoubtedly have to be replaced in the next few years. The Neptune rug is perfect and beautiful. It was an absolute false economy trying out the cheaper ones and will have cost me more in the long run!
The Neptune rugs are here online
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Garden Trading Templecombe Chair.
What an absolute beauty this chair is. I have ordered one for The Dorset Nest, the thatched cottage we’re currently getting ready for holiday bookings. Because the cottage already has some beautiful, relaxed velvety armchairs in it (in the living room and in the ssshhh secret snug upstairs) I wanted a chair for the bedroom that was a bit different. Not so…upholstered. Not a mass of sumptuous fabric, because I’d already ticked that box.
RATTAN!
I mean the ticking stripe cushions are the cherry on the cake here, I can’t resist a bit of ticking stripe thrown in somewhere, but look at the frame! I’m excited about this chair even though I’ll very rarely get to actually sit in it.
Sometimes I think I run this holiday cottage business just so I can live out my interiors fantasies.
The chair is here online - they also do a plain cushion version.
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XL Rattan Lamp
Hurrah, something that doesn’t cost a billion pounds, you’re thinking. Yes I do think that this Habitat lamp is quite the steal, for a piece so large and striking. My concern is that it wouldn’t let out much light, but I love it for its sculptural appeal. It’s £80 here.
Hasthilp Rattan Mirror
I really really really really really love these Hasthilp rattan mirrors but they are, alas, outside of the current cottage reno budget. What craftsmanship! Superb. This, hung just above the most beautiful antique chest of drawers, a little jar of dried lavender off to the side, windows open, cottage curtains fluttering in the light breeze, sound of birds coming in from outside, a la Disney… ooph.
Hasthilp seem to be the king pins of luxury rattan stuff, by the way. I feel as though I could do a degree in wicker at this point.
Hatherley Antique Brass and Rattan Wall Light
I think that rattan mixed with metal looks very smart. Want a traditional-looking wall light but then with a softer, more rustic lean? Bingo. Neptune also do something similar (more pricey) and Pooky do their mix-and-match lamps with little rattan shades available, but I really like the simplicity of this wall light.
It’s here.
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Kallax Baskets
And finally, if you do have Kallax and fancy giving them a bit of a spruce and a prettify, the baskets they do to fit them are online here. At £15 each they’re more expensive than the cardboard ones, obviously, and also more expensive than the fabric ones, but not by much and the good thing about them is that they don’t break over time (the number of fabric ones that have died a death!) and you could use them without the Kallax, in the future, so I see them as more of a solid investment.
Right, off to re-watch the Wicker trailer and plan my Wicker-viewing evening and also work on my masterplan to get invited to the Wicker premiere so that I can wear a dress made out of rattan and a matching rattan hat. Maybe one of the lampshades from Pooky would work well?