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What do we mean by rustic furniture?
The idea of what constitutes rustic furniture is different in the USA and Canada to the UK.  Across the Atlantic rustic furniture is thought of as furniture made from wood that is still in an unworked or virtually unworked form.  This is furniture made of sticks or sections of tree that can still clearly be identified as part of a tree.

In the UK rustic furniture would at one time have meant furniture from a rural area or made by rural craftsmen.  A rustic bed would therefore have been found in the more humble country dwellings – although it is possible that the local squire, wealthy farmer or country dweller may also have commissioned such a piece from their local (and therefore rustic) carpenter or cabinet maker rather than the more fashionable London-based cabinet makers and joiners.  In more recent times the meaning of rustic has changed its context and now applies to any furniture that looks, or has been made to look, old or used – regardless of where it has been made.  The term distressed furniture would therefore be more accurate – though perhaps this is regarded as a less attractive description for marketing purposes.

What made the ‘rustic’ look so popular?
So what made ‘rustic furniture’ so popular and lead to the creation of the rustic bed?  Certainly before the middle of the 20th Century, such furniture would have been dismissed as being of a lower quality.  It is possible that two major factors influenced the rise of distressed furniture.  The first was a growing social acceptance of individual expression or individuality, perhaps as a reaction to the conformity demanded during wartime.   

The second was the effect of changes to Britain’s system of taxation.  In post war Britain the repayment of war debt and the creation of the welfare state needed money, some of which was to be raised by a fairer distribution of the country’s wealth.  Consequently landowners and the occupants of large country houses were subject to new taxation regimes which made it difficult or sometimes impossible to maintain these properties in the same way as in the past.  Some were bequeathed to the nation through organisations such as the National Trust, while others simply faded into decline.  Thousands were also demolished.   

In this environment, it became acceptable and then fashionable in ‘society circles’ to have interiors furnished with items that had once been elegant but were now decidedly faded or worn.  Living in such straitened circumstances led to the birth of what is now known as shabby chic.  Soon, furniture that was not just patinated like a good quality antique, but positively worn became desirable.    

While the term shabby chic is usually applied to painted furniture, the concept of having worn or faded furniture also encompassed furniture in wood finishes.  ‘Genuine’ distressed or shabby chic items could not fulfil demand for the new look, so entrepreneurs began producing new furniture that was made to look distressed or rustic – hence the rustic bed was born.   

The arrival of the rustic bed
Early supplies of rustic or ‘distressed’ furniture, were actually second hand items that had been beaten with chains, punctured with darts or even, in extreme cases, peppered with shotgun pellets to achieve a worn appearance.  Gradually the methods of distressing to produce items such as rustic beds were refined and improved.  Today’s rustic-style furniture also has a more convincing ‘patination’ to it, even though this has been quickly achieved in a modern workshop rather than through years of hard use in a household.

Reclaimed furniture is, to use the correct definition, furniture made from timber that has already been used elsewhere – such as furniture made from old railway sleepers or telegraph poles.  The idea is not new, as timber from old ships and other sources – such as the monasteries closed during the dissolution under Henry VIII – have always been re-used.  During the post-war period of the 1950s, when all materials were in short supply, timber from the packing cases bringing supplies to American forces in Britain were used for furniture making.   

Whenever the wood is not second hand but has just been made to look like such, then the furniture is described as reclaimed-style furniture.