American wicker furniture was made in distinctive styles that are now valued antiques.
Wicker boxes, baskets and chairs have been recovered on archaeological digs in Egypt. The Egyptians wove river reeds and swamp grasses from the Nile, and their handiwork spread in popularity throughout the Roman Empire. Today, wicker furniture is made from rattan, bamboo, cane, reed, willow and even resin. But connoisseurs of vintage wicker seek out the four styles that dominated American-designed wicker furniture during the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries and that continue to influence wicker design. Does this Spark an idea?
Victorian Wicker
Victorian wicker is what many people first think of when they imagine wicker furniture. It is elaborately scrolled and curlicued. The designs are complex and might include beading, spirals or flower shapes of bent wicker, tabletops woven tightly of thin strands, and legs and supports of more substantial reeds or branches. A simpler Victorian style was still intricately woven but somewhat less ornate and featured repetitive patterns rather than ornate detailing. The furniture ranged from sofas and love seats to chairs, side tables, bookshelves, music stands, bird cages, rockers, stools and picture and mirror frames. The Victorian wicker heyday dates from about 1850 to 1900.
Bar Harbor Wicker
Bar Harbor-style wicker is much less showy than its Victorian cousin. It was widely made from 1900 to about 1920 when art deco became the style-du-jour. Bar Harbor is hand-woven, the reeds are criss-crossed in an open diamond pattern, and the borders are tightly woven together in a braid. The overall shape of the pieces may be gently curved or squared-off but the lattice-work sections are unmistakably Bar Harbor style. Porch chairs may have magazine pockets on the outside of one or both arms. The relative severity of the unpainted and stained pieces resembles Mission furniture.
Stick Wicker
Stick wicker is very symmetrical and vertical. It has a modern look to it. The reeds are the same size, evenly spaced and do not overlap. The vertical reeds are set in the frame, not woven together. Furniture tends to be more angular and squared than round. It has flat, wide armrests, occasionally with built-in cup holders. Chairs and sofas may have magazine pockets and the seats are deep and designed to hold thick cushions. Stick wicker was popular from the early 1900s to late 1920s.
Art Deco
Art deco combined very closely woven patterns with woven-in art deco designs. A natural-colored wicker chair or table might have a woven center panel using lighter and painted reeds in a sharp geometric design: diamonds were popular as were zig-zags and arrows and anything angular. While the pieces themselves are curvy, they are not ornate or curlicued. The shapes tend more to be rounded with alternating close-weave and loose-weave sections, flared legs and boxy bases. Art deco was popular during the Age of the Flappers. The 1920s saw a lot of it produced. In 1917, the Lloyd loom was invented and wicker began to be woven in sheets, like cloth. This resulted in sheets of machine-woven skinny reeds or paper strands that could be applied to frames of sturdier hand-bent and assembled reeds, and made wicker more widely available as a decorating choice.
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