Our premium quality rattan patio furniture is all handwoven. Discover more about the process and why this is a huge benefit to the appearance of your furniture below.
Understanding the process of how your rattan furniture is made, we’re sure will give you a greater appreciation for your furniture and help you understand how each piece is unique.
"Many people are surprised to find out that each piece of our rattan furniture collection has been handwoven as opposed to being mass-produced by machines."
- White Stores
All of our rattan garden furniture is made from aluminium framework that is very pliable and easy to shape into the form of a chair, table, sofa piece and many other great shapes that make up your garden furniture. These frames are then handwoven with HDPE synthetic rattan strands to make the furniture rattan garden furniture.
Real rattan is never used in the UK as it is a type of vine that, whilst one of the strongest woods available, is not suitable to the UK’s damp climate as it tends to rot when exposed to too much water. So, the plastic substitute HDPE synthetic rattan is used for our furniture instead. This is the highest quality synthetic rattan material available as it is the most weatherproof. Other synthetic substitutes include PU and PVC; however, these materials are not nearly as durable as HDPE (sometimes referred to as PE).
This material is incredibly pliable and therefore ideal for creating different furniture pieces such as various chair shapes, sofa pieces and dining tables. The process of hand weaving involves firstly stapling the vertical strands to the frame and then weaving the horizontal strands through to create the dense finish seen in quality rattan garden furniture.
Many people are surprised to find out that each piece of our rattan furniture collection has been handwoven as opposed to being mass-produced by machines. We believe this makes the furniture all the more special knowing how much time and care has gone into each piece. It takes approx. 1 hour to hand weave one single dining chair and approx. 1 hour 30 minutes to hand weave a single dining table, demonstrating how much effort goes into this process.
As each piece is handwoven, this means that each item is completely unique so you will never have furniture that is exactly the same as somebody else’s and that makes each item incredibly special. This does mean that some colours may vary compared to our online photography and other pieces even in the same set. We find that this colour variation is much more noticeable in our Classic/Flat Weave collection in both the brown and grey colours as these items use a combination of two different colours to make up each piece.
If you do not like the idea of potential colour variation but still wish to opt for rattan garden furniture you will find this is much less noticeable in our Heritage collection. However, if you love the idea of your furniture being utterly unique then the Classic collection will demonstrate this perfectly.
The benefits of the handweaving process include:
• Unique garden furniture
• Furniture made with care
• Strong, dense furniture
• Being able to make different shapes and styles through this process
• Minimal errors made and those that are such as loose rattan are easily remedied.
If you want to test how comfortable our rattan furniture is before buying, we recommend a visit to one of our showrooms to see and sit on the furniture in person.
