WICKER FURNITURE
      Wicker is a weaving process, not a material. One of the materials used in the weaving process is called rattan core, which comes from the rattan interior. A machine cuts the inside of the rattan pole, into pieces small enough in diameter for the weaving. Due to the nature of this product, splits and discolorations in the rattan poles are to be expected. They even enhance the beauty and uniqueness of these handcrafted products.Wicker is made of a variety of vines, grasses, and plants that are woven into the furniture. The four major types are rattan, reed, willow, and bamboo. Wicker furniture first became popular during the Victorian era, when its smooth lines and curves were valued for their design and cleanliness. Its popularity made its way to the United States through European immigrants, and eventually Americans adopted and adapted the furniture to fit their own needs and styles. In 1995 the Smithsonian did a wicker retrospective and the trend resurfaced, once again in Europe first, then the States. Also just as before, Americans took the European styles and reinvented them to create a fashionable, utilitarian approach to wicker.
     The tightly woven and smaller designs that are often still associated with wicker furniture have given way to larger, brighter pieces. Chairs and sofas are often found in brick red, hunter green, or golden yellow, and boast wider seats and comfortable cushions. Wicker has even made the leap from mere furniture to walls. Designers have been weaving walls from quarter-inch split cane. These walls are often used as a seamless transfer from an indoor room to an outdoor room. Instead of a noticeable break from outside to inside, the use of wicker walls along with coordinating colors and textures creates a natural flow. Wicker has become more and more appealing to men, who enjoy its simplicity and sturdiness. However, when choosing wicker furniture, it is important to choose a woven material that is dense. Light wicker is unsteady and unreliable. It is also important to find furniture that is made on a hardwood or rattan frame to increase its sturdiness and durability. Higher quality wicker will not crack or peel, but cheaper versions might split, leaving stray pieces that will poke your skin. Also, if your wicker is going to be placed on a patio, look for specially-treated furniture made with molded resin or coated with plastic. These materials will protect the furniture from the sun and humidity. It used to be that you simply mentioned the phrase “wicker furniture” and most people cringed.
      However, this is certainly not the case anymore. This type of furniture, once a thing of the past, has recently been gaining much popularity in the furniture world. Its versatility and distinctiveness set it apart from the rest of the industry. Whether you set two wicker chairs on your patio to enhance the wooden setting surrounding them, or you pair the furniture with an elegant wooden table in the living room, it is a key asset to beautify your home. Wicker is not what it used to be. A modification from the traditional plain and discomforting furniture designs, wicker today fashions chic and comfy furniture pieces that work well with many different decoration schemes. The colors and sizes of this type of furniture have obtained a splendid range, allowing you to pair it with almost anything inside or outside your home. Today’s innovative designs draw in the market of youth, men, and women, and often offers great pieces of furniture for pets. Whether you’re seeking distinctiveness, simplicity, or an exotic vibe, wicker furniture can match your desires. Choosing the best wicker for your home is very essential. Making a faulty choice can lead to you to spending hundreds of dollars on adorning your trashcan.
     The best wicker is set on hardwood frames. The wicker itself should be a dense woven material; this will guarantee its durability, compared to wicker of lighter weight. Specifically, outdoor furniture should be weather resistant and should be able to endure harsh rays of the sun in the summer. Furniture that is specially treated will definitely assure the lastingness of the material. Furniture made from wicker comes in a variety of pieces, including love seats, coffee tables, rockers, sofas, bedroom furniture, chaise lounges, lamps, bookshelves, bar stools, children’s furniture, dining tables, and more. The amount of items that can be paired with wicker is endless, which makes this type of furniture a versatile piece for anyone’s house. Once you have purchased your wicker furniture, it is important to gain an understanding of how to uphold and clean your furniture. Wicker has to methodically be dusted or wiped with a soft cloth. A vacuum with a smooth-surfaced attachment will succeed as well. If you happen to come across a misfortune such as spilling juice or food stains on your wicker, you can get rid of them by using a mild soap diluted in water. When applying it to the wicker, make sure your cloth is not drenched. Stains and spills also have to be wiped away gently in order to refrain from discoloring, breaking, or scratching the wicker. Make sure you clean your wicker every two to three weeks to ensure the long life of your furniture.

RATTAN FURNITURE
      Rattan is among the oldest natural furniture material in use today. Unlike bamboo, which is hollow, rattan is a solid timber vine that grows in the jungles of Indonesia. Rattans are climbing palms that provide the raw material for the cane-furniture industry. Sometimes confused with bamboo, canes can usually be distinguished because they are solid, whereas bamboos are almost always hollow. Although there are some climbing palms in the New World, the true rattans are restricted to the Old World tropics and subtropics. They are particularly abundant in South-east Asia and the Malay Archipelago.
      Over 600 different species belonging to 13 genera have been recognised. Their major habitat is tropical rain forest, where in much of South-east Asia they represent the most important forest product after timber. The trade in rattans and canes is thought to be worth about £3 billion annually. The trade is labour intensive, and as it involves some of the poorest people in the community, is of great social significance. Rattans have long and very flexible stems that need support. In favourable conditions some species will grow to very great lengths. The longest cane ever recorded was over 175 m long. Some species are single-stemmed while others are multi-stemmed, single-stemmed species providing a single harvest while the multi-stemmed species can be harvested sustainably. Surrounding the stem are sheathing leaf bases which are nearly always fiercely spiny, the spines sometimes arranged in neat rows and interlocking to form galleries in which ants make their nests, providing extra protection to an already well protected plant.
      This may prevent animals from feeding on the tender growing point (or 'cabbage'), hidden within the leaf-sheaths. As well as the sheath spines, rattans usually have whips, either on the leaf sheaths or at the ends of the leaves. These whips are armed with grouped, grapnel-like spines and play a major role in supporting the rattan as it climbs into the forest canopy. It is these terrible whips and spines that make the scientific collection of rattans so unpleasant and are in part responsible for making this a poorly studied and still only partially understood group of plants.

Harvesting and processing.
      Rattan gatherers need to pull the canes down from the forest canopy and remove the spiny sheaths, leaves and whips. This leaves the bare cane of commerce. Rattan-harvesting is thus a rather dangerous business - dead branches can be dislodged as the rattan is pulled and ants and wasps can often be disturbed in the process. The bare canes are carried out of the forest and partially processed before being sold to middlemen; small diameter canes are dried in the sun and often smoked over burning sulphur while large canes are boiled in oil (often a mixture of diesel oil and palm oil) to remove excess moisture and natural gums, and to prevent attack by wood-boring beetles.

Uses
      Locally rattans are used for a very wide range of purposes, the most important being in the manufacture of baskets and mats. Undoubtedly rattan remains the most important source of material for making baskets and mats in the South-east Asian region; however, as the wild resource becomes scarce, other materials such as split bamboo are used as substitutes. In the past much of the commercially harvested cane was exported to manufacturers in Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Europe and North America. Now some producing countries have introduced export tariffs or export bans for raw cane to encourage the manufacture of rattan furniture within the producing countries, thereby adding value to the exported product, and also helping to conserve stocks of wild rattan. However, these bans have also put extreme pressure on stocks of rattans in countries where cane export is not controlled, resulting in severe over-exploitation and even disappearance of the wild resource.

Rattan Cultivation
      Almost all the rattan that enters world trade has been collected from the wild from tropical rain forests. With forest destruction and conversion, the habitat of rattans has decreased rapidly in extent over the last few decades and there is now a very real shortage of supply. In the mid 1970s, forest departments in South-east Asia became aware of the vulnerability of rattan supply and began investigations aimed at safeguarding the long term supply of canes for the industry. Cultivation of canes presents the best possibility for the future. Early research examined pre-existing cultivation. In one small area of Indonesian Borneo rattan has been cultivated in permanent rattan gardens on land adjacent to rivers that flood severely and for prolonged periods. This land, that is more or less unsuitable for any other permanent form of agriculture because of the flooding and very acid soils, appears to be ideal for the cultivation of one rattan, Calamus trachycoleus.
     Here, villagers have developed a method of cultivation that has been used as a model for rattan cultivation elsewhere, whether on flooded or dry land. However, this species has a cane of small diameter (6-12 mm); large diameter canes (in excess of 18mm) are needed to produce the framework of cane chairs, and a major focus of rattan research has been to find large diameter canes that are suitable for domestication and cultivation in a variety of habitats.During the late 1970s commercial estates of rattan were established in Sabah, East Malaysia. Commercial rattan planting is still a risky business as there is still so much that is unknown about the growing of rattans. However, growth rates in the new estates have been amazing - small diameter Calamus trachycoleus and the best large diameter cane Calamus manan have both been recorded as growing as fast as over 6 m a year. Several estates have already reached harvestable age and the financial returns from the estates seem promising. There are also some unexpected benefits from rattan planting.

Benefits of rattan cultivation
      In order to grow properly rattan has to be planted under some sort of tree cover, such as logged-over forest, secondary forest, fruit orchards, tree plantations or, even, rubber estates. Thus rattan planting preserves tree cover, and along with tree cover, where it is semi-natural forest, wildlife is also maintained. One of the highest populations of orang-utan in Borneo is in a rattan estate and over half the wild species of rattans recorded for Sarawak have been recorded as occurring wild within the boundaries of another rattan estate. Such commercial planting thus offers attractive prospects for wise land use in the humid tropics, allowing a crop to be grown with minimal disturbance of the vegetation. However, perhaps the most exciting potential of rattan is as a small-holder crop.
     Some rattans lend themselves to cultivation on a small scale under fruit trees or in rubber gardens. Such cultivation allows the smallholder to gain extra cash returns from a small area of land. Rattan research at Kew With over 600 species to choose from and a huge geographical, altitudinal and ecological range, choosing the right cane for the right habitat is clearly a complex process. What is certain is that the basic classification of rattans is of great importance to the further development of the wild resource - we must know what species we are trying to cultivate and how to distinguish it from other species of rattans at all stages of development from seed to mature plant. Kew plays a vital role in the basic research on rattans in providing the taxonomic framework for development. Kew scientists now have wide experience in rattans, their natural history, economic potential and cultivation requirements.
      Current research needs for the further development of rattan that are being addressed at Kew include the search for more species suitable for plantations. At present we know enough to cultivate a mere four or five of the 600 different species of rattan, and these are all species of the ever wet lowlands of the Malay Archipelago. There is a real need to broaden this base, to look for further elite species from which selections can be made, to be used eventually in the breeding of new strains.

How is the Furniture Constructed ?
      The rattan is placed in a steam box which is necessary for bending the rattan and making it more pliable. Jigs are constructed for producing specific shapes. When the rattan is steaming hot, it is bent to fit into the jig. Once cooled, the rattan will remain in that shape. The shaped poles are assembled with straight poles that are contoured to fit joints evenly. Our furniture is constructed only with quality hardware. The joints where the two pieces meet are wrapped cheifly with peel / wicker / leather bindings.

How is the Furniture Finished ?
      Once the furniture is complete, combinations of latex and alcohol base stains are used to obtain a homogeneous finish. Painstaking detail is used to prepare and sand each piece for a clean, smooth surface. Water Hyacinth - furniture is made from the dried stems of this ubiquitous aquatic plant in an ingenious weave technique to create comfortable sofas and chairs, that are not only strong but are pieces of great beauty and character. Abaca - is a species of plantain banana tree, grown especially for the inner layers of its bark. This robust plantation grown material is woven in intricate patterns of great style that our designers use to maximum effect.

Product Care - Maintenance & Cleaning
      Do not allow your furniture to be exposed to harsh Ultraviolet sunlight for prolonged periods of time, as this can affect the colour. Turn the cushions periodically. Gently wipe over the frames with a moist, clean cloth to remove dust or spills and vacuum the woven parts with a soft brush attachment. For major liquid spills, remove all upholstery, hose the water hyacinth furniture and place outside or in a drying room to dry. Please note that it is important that the furniture is dried and not remain wet or damp for any length of time as this will result in mould and subsequent deterioration of the water hyacinth furniture. Water hyacinth is a natural untreated handmade product and will absorb moisture and dry out in direct relation to climate conditions. To avoid any deterioration it is recommended that the environment be dry and well ventilated.

CANE FURNITURE
      Cane furniture has been the obvious choice for garden and conservatory living for decades. The manufacture of cane furniture, however, calls for a high degree of skill on the part of the workers. Such skill is found to be traditional. In the manufacture of cane furniture. Our range of well fabricated and nicely carved polished rattan and cane furniture like rattan sofa set, cane rattan sofa set, cane furniture, rattan stools, designer cane sofa sets, designer cane chairs are made from fine quality cane. These canes are crafted and designed by our seasoned and competent craftsmen and designers. Further, the effective use of various advanced crafting machines assist us to bring exclusive designs and patterns in these furnitures.
     Rattan and cane furniture is a product of artistic design made with the combination of rattan and cane. Rattan is one of nature's strongest woods that can grow up to some hundred feet high and is extremely strong and durable. Cane is a material used for weaving chair seats and other furniture within the frames of rattan. Caning material is derived from the skin of rattan vines grown mostly in Indonesia. Although rattan and cane furniture is originated in regions of Indonesia yet it gained worldwide popularity. Rattan cane doesn't trash and is ideal for making furniture. Rattan and cane furniture is made up of solid core, therefore much more durable and harder to break. For making rattan and cane furniture firstly cane is being cut into smaller sections and then the same are molded into different shapes of frames for various furniture items. Rattan and cane furniture is very lightweight and flexible to a certain extent.
      Rattan and cane furniture is also easy to maintain as it can be painted like many other kind of wood. Rattan and cane furniture really adds a pleasure and comfort to your home décor. As it is designed after keeping in consideration the requirements and tastes of all sections of society. Each type of rattan and cane furniture differs in terms of used material, design and cost. All what buyer has to do is to identify the type of rattan and cane furniture most suited to their tastes and needs. The designs of our suites are extensive and if the design you require is not available in our range then we may be able to manufacture to your design and specification.

MANUFACTURER AND EXPORTER
      We are manufacturer and exporter of cane furniture in Indonesia. Established in 2004. We can serve 20 container 40ft per month and we have factory for 4300 sq m2 size area. Planet Rattan as the one of cane furniture exporter want to get the demand in cane furniture business and take the World Market. Planet Rattan is aim any kind of buyers and customers, Planet Rattan accept the rattan furniture importer, wholesales, and also retailer shop that selling furniture in retail. Planet Rattan with the capability of human resources and infrastructures is having a huge respond from the customer which are coming from many countries. We look forward to the future with great confidence as we continue to strive for even greater success and increased customer satisfaction. It's our pleasure doing business with your company and we anticipate a mutually beneficial, long term relationship.

Product Care - Maintenance & Cleaning
      It is important to note that cane furniture is a natural product. This means that it will be subject to variations in color and shades – these are the unique characteristics that make every item different. Maybe you will notice that your furniture might creak slightly at times. These are not flaws, but a part of its natural beauty. If your cane furniture is placed in a conservatory, it is recommended that you periodically move it around so that all the areas have equal sun exposure. You may also install blinds or throw pillows to reduce sun exposure. Wipe your furniture with a soft and slightly damp cloth.
      You can use an occasional polish to help keep the cane look its best. However, do not use abrasive creams, thinners, and benzene. Do not drag the furniture when moving it because this will split the cane. Please ensure that you lift it as you move it. Turn your cushions regularly so that the sun fading of the fabric will be even. Do not store your cane furniture in wet areas or high humidity areas where mildew and mold might form. Examples are crawl spaces or basements where it can’t get adequate air circulation. If you notice mildew or mold growing on your furniture, you should use a strong bleach solution in warm soapy water, and then rinse it well. Let it dry outdoors in a warm and windy day or in the sunshine.
      Just be careful not to spill your bleach solution on any of your cane furniture’s surrounding wooden frame. If you notice a hole becoming bigger or a few broken strands, you can place a padded cushion over your seat so that you can extend its use for months or years.

Natural Resources of Indonesia
      The supply of rattan in Indonesia comes mainly from natural forests and some from plantations. Some 9 million hectares of forests and plantation areas scattered all over the country are registered with an average production of more than 300,000 tons per annum. Based on studies and observations conducted recently in 16 provinces, the production potential could be increased to around 600,000 tons per annum. The present production level already gives Indonesia a dominant position as the main supplier of rattan law materials in the world, accounting for almost 80% of the world trade. Indonesia has some 300 rattan species, a number of which are known to be the best cane quality available in the world, such as Manau cane (Calamus Manau) or Sega rattan (Calamus Caesius).

CERANOR 2009 - Home, Hotel, Decoration and Gift Sector
3F Fall 2009 - International Famous Furniture Fair Dongguan
MACEF Milano Fall 2009 - International Home Show
MAISON&OBJET
Perfect Home and Interior Fair
The 18th Dragon Excellent Furniture Fair
COMFORTEX - Trade Fair for Interior Design
CIFF Fall 2009 - 24th China International Furniture Fair Guangzhou
The Autumn Furniture & Home Accessories Fair 2009
Furniture China 2009 - 15th China International Furniture Expo & The Autumn Domestic Sourcing Fair
Habitare 09 - Furniture, Interior Decoration and Design Fair
HomeStyle Astana 2009 - 6th Kazakhstan International Specialised Exhibition "Household Appliances, Furniture and Interiors"
Tendence 2009 - 14th International Trade Fair of Furniture, Decoration & Interiors
Las Vegas Market Fall 2009
Index Furniture 2009 - International Tradefair on Furniture, Fabric and Artefacts
Habitat Valencia FIM DE>CO 2009 - International Furniture Fair of Valencia
Moldexpo 2009 - 10th X International Specialized Exhibition of Furniture
FURNITURE - AUTUMN 2009
Florida Industrial Woodworking Expo
12th International Exhibtion "Baltic Furniture Market"