Wicker weaves its way back into style

ShopfrontWicker, cane and rattan can suffer from a hippie image but even back in the 1920s, architect Mies van der Rohe was combining it with tubular steel to cool effect and good designers are still giving it a contemporary twist, writes Eoin Lyons

Patricia Urquiola is one of the most influential furniture designers today working not only for B&B Italia, the high-end Italian company, but she also designs for Driade, which is a less expensive brand.

What Driade produces for its store on the Via Durini in Milan, gives a sharp picture of what will probably be the next popular shape, colour or material in interior furnishings.

Driade was one of the first companies to take plastic furniture into the mainstream: now it can be found in many mid-price range stores.

Last April at the Milan furniture fair Urquiola showed tables and chairs made for Driade in woven rattan (a finer version of wicker) so the material should soon take on a cool new image.

Urquiola uses it in a light way with modern organic shapes that don't detract from its crafty roots.

The material may bring a sense of déjà vu but Urquiola isn't the first or the only one to use something similar in a contemporary way.

Mies van der Rohe first took wicker, rattan, cane and other variations away from an exclusively garden look in the Twenties, when he designed a chair mixing woven cane with tubular steel.

It was a big step to mix two such incongruous materials.

Today, Irish furniture company Lomi sells a chair with bent and shaped rattan on an armchair frame.

This malleability seems to be the inspiration for sun loungers at Ikea that are made from plastic made to look like painted wicker. They also do a more regular dining chair with rattan seat and back.

Marks & Spencer has also got into wicker with a new sofa in a retro shape.

It's not what you would expect from Marks & Spencer but it's all part of the company's overhaul of its interiors range, the most notable project in this revamp being architect John Pawson's full scale house that sits within the Marks & Spencer store in Gateshead, UK.