Rat-ta-ta-tan

My Aunt Marie Belle O’Hara should have lived in Palm Springs or Palm Beach. Or for that matter, anywhere with tropical foliage in its name.Her design sensibility, along with her upswept Eva Gabor chignon, belonged to the equatorial world. Turquoise, peach, coral, pink, cream and the sharpest chartreuse not made by God was her métier.

To step into my Aunt Marie Belle’s home was to sense a blast of Floridian humidity stirred through by an overhead fan. Her sun porch dominated her Shawnee Mission, Kansas, home. That’s where we dined. That’s where the highballs were served along with Ritzy crackers spread with cheese and an olive (I always took the olive off!). That’s where her two grand pianos sat and where she played duets with friends. And that’s where she housed her rattan collection, which was her pride and joy.

Rattan bookcases, sconces, card table, chairs, sofas, ottoman and a deco bar were strewn throughout her sun room. The upholstery was slipcovered with peach and turquoise splattered fabrics—so modern to this young boy who grew up in the realm of beige.

Chinese fretwork dining chairs were lacquered lime with vibrant lime stripes. And the white glossy bamboo bookcases were chock full of gay china (a time when gay meant light and happy). Aunt Marie Belle’s sun room, a fishbowl of hard-to-pull-open sliding glass doors, was a room to flop around in—so sturdy was the rattan and bamboo.

Perhaps it was the liquids served in colorful Trader Vic glasses, but this material has always held a certain fortified nostalgia for me. And a recent revival of its Rat Pack style has only encouraged the market to sit up and take notice.

Rattan, bamboo and wicker furniture has had several heydays.

The first craze came about when the sun never set on the British Empire—the late Victorian period—as travelers and families once stationed in the tropics returned home, bringing with them their rattan, bamboo and wicker furniture. As England’s cool, wet climate was hardly suitable for this kind of furniture, it soon populated the indoors, becoming immensely stylish.

The second period followed World War II when returning veterans from the Pacific Rim hauled back entire living room sets. Hollywood set designers used the furnishings for their film designs. Miami Beach adopted it for its far-off South Seas romance, transforming it into the tropical Deco style we love today.

From the late 1940s to the late 1960s, the Hawaiian tiki and Polynesian rattan style swept the shelter magazines, seducing Palm Springs, the Caribbean, Hollywood, Florida, the Bahamas and every “Florida” room in every suburb across the USA. Designer Paul Frankl made a name for himself weaving parallel clusters of hefty rattan into his famous pretzel armchair.

Rattan grows as a long stem-like vine, uniform in diameter, in the rain forests of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Bangladesh and the Philippines. It is a tropical climbing palm with a tough skin—often spiny to prevent attack by herbivores and spiked to clutch onto tree branches as it seeks the sun—that protects a strong, smooth fibrous core beneath. The rattan stem can easily exceed 600 feet in length.

In harvesting rattan, the stem is cut and peeled with machetes, sliced into 13-foot lengths, smoked to cure and to obtain and stabilize its even light color. And then it is shipped. To bend rattan, steam heat is applied, and once formed, it is stable and practically indestructible.

As opposed to the concentric rings of hardwood harvested from upright trees, rattan’s grain grows vertically, making it one of the strongest woods available. Rattan is also lightweight, and unlike bamboo—a member of the grass family, which is hollow—rattan has a solid core.

In joining this material, screws or nails are frequently used. These joints are decoratively disguised or covered with thin woven strips of peeled rattan.

According to Paul Aronson, of West Palm Beach’s famous store, Bamboo and Rattan, rattan is the better bet when it comes to holding up structurally.

“Rattan is a far superior material to bamboo. Bamboo is structurally weaker, requires significant nailing, gluing and binding and is it flexible only when freshly cut and green,” he reported. “It [bamboo] often cracks when bent.”

“Also, do not confuse rattan with wicker,” he continued. “An item with a particular weaving style, whatever the material used, such as straw, cane, strips of rattan, reed willow, rush or bamboo, is called ‘wicker.’ But rattan is the specific vine-like wood itself.”

Another benefit of rattan is that it takes paint easily, as Jonathan Adler’s rattan furniture brightly proves. My Aunt Marie Belle’s everlasting dining set also presents a convincing testimonial.

Though most people prefer rattan’s natural wheat coloration, as a “green” material, rattan grows quickly—quicker than tropical wood. It grows all year round and must grow among trees. So in order to harvest rattan, local villagers and tribesman in those southeast Asian countries are not cutting down the rain forests.

The sweeping deco and '50s-era rattan designs in sofas, sectionals, lamps, coffee tables, dining tables, chests, sconces and even chandeliers can be breathtakingly creative. Not to mention that it ultimately exudes an air of casual relaxation.

Successfully produced and marketed by a number of high-end American furniture companies, rattan is ubiquitous, and available at reasonable prices. The frames seldom deteriorate, though you may find musty old cushions sitting on rattan covered in faded palm frond-printed barkcloth.

Even freshening faded rattan is not difficult, according to Mr. Aronson.

“To revive their finish, several coats of old-fashioned shellac, which allows the rattan to breathe, is just the ticket,” he said, warning never to use polyurethane.

Nostalgia sets in every time I recall my Aunt Marie Belle’s sun porch. Stylish in its upbeat mixture of deco sofas, Chinese Chippendale chairs and colorful etageres, her rattan furnishings set the bar for American tropical optimism.

On those cold February Kansas City Saturdays with our parents toting Trader Vic Mai-Tais, leaning on the bamboo bar, with cheese- and olive-covered Ritz crackers spread on the bamboo coffee table and the TV blaring Jackie Gleason, “Live from Miami Beach,” we knew as we nestled into her hibiscus-colored rattan chairs that we were submerged in sub-equatorial bliss. Aunt Marie Belle’s sun porch was always our winter tropical getaway.