Rustic & Reclaimed Bedsides

What is meant by rustic furniture?
Rustic furniture has a rather different meaning in North America than it does in the UK.  It would appear that Americans (and presumably Canadians) regard rustic furniture as being made of wood that is still in an unworked or virtually unworked form.  In other words, furniture that is made of sticks or sections of tree trunk and that can still clearly seen to have come from a tree.

Before about the middle of the 20th Century, rustic furniture in Britain would have meant furniture from a rural area or made by rural craftsmen.  A rustic bedside cabinet would therefore have been made by the local carpenter or cabinet maker rather than more fashionable cabinet makers and joiners with London premises.  But in more recent times the meaning of rustic has changed and today it is applied to any furniture that looks, or has been made to look, old or used – regardless of wherever it has been made.  A more accurate description would perhaps be distressed furniture, although this is regarded as a less attractive term for marketing purposes.

What caused ‘rustic’ to become so popular?
To the logical mind, purchasing rustic furniture might be seen as an odd thing to do – rather like buying ripped jeans – so how did it become so widely accepted? What makes a rustic bedside cabinet an acceptable item of furniture? Before about the 1950s, such furniture would simply have been dismissed as tatty or poor quality.  It could perhaps be argued that two major factors influenced the rise of distressed furniture.  The first was a growing public acceptance of the freedom of the individual to express their own ideas of style and taste.  This was perhaps a natural reaction to the conformity that had been so vital to success during wartime.

By the 1960s it was generally accepted that an individual should be allowed to pursue their own objectives and do what pleased them.  It was no longer necessary for personal taste to be dictated by convention and if a person wished to furnish their property in their own individual style with, for example rustic bedside cabinets, then why not.

Another major factor was a consequence of changes made to Britain’s system of taxation.  The country was financially broken by six years of conflict but there was a determination that the sacrifices made should not go unrewarded.  Paying for the War and establishing a welfare state needed money.  As a result landowners and the owners of large country houses were subject to new taxation regimes which made it much harder, or sometimes impossible, to maintain these properties in the same way as in the past.  Some houses were given away by their owners to the nation through organisations such as the National Trust, whilst others set up public attractions as a means of raising revenue (such as Alton Towers and Longleat).  Many were simply demolished.   

In this new climate it became at first acceptable and then positively fashionable to have interiors furnished with items that had once been elegant but were now decidedly faded or worn.  The new era led to the creation of what is now known as shabby chic.  It became de rigeur to have furniture that was not just patinated like a good quality antique, but positively worn.

Although the term shabby chic is commonly applied to painted furniture the concept of having worn or faded furniture is also relevant to furniture in wood finishes.  Supplies of original distressed, or shabby chic, examples of both types could not fulfil demand, so entrepreneurs began producing new furniture that was deliberately made to look distressed or rustic – hence the arrival of the rustic bedside cabinet.   

The rustic bedside cabinet evolves
Early supplies of rustic or ‘distressed’ furniture, were usually second hand items that had been ‘aged’ by being beaten with chains, punctured with darts or even peppered with shotgun pellets!  Gradually the methods for producing furniture such as a rustic bedside cabinet were refined and improved.  Newer rustic-style furniture has a more convincing ‘patination,’ even though, ironically, it is achieved within minutes in a modern workshop rather than through years of hard use in a household.