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Take a look at some of the dark wood bedsides that we have on offer that would compliment any of our rustic blanket boxes perfectly.

What is meant by rustic furniture?
Rustic furniture is one of those phrases that can mean different things to different people.  In America and Canada for example, it describes furniture made of wood that is still in an unworked or virtually unworked form.  In other words, furniture that can be seen to have been made from sticks or sections of tree trunk.

In Britain at any time before about sixty years ago, rustic furniture would have meant furniture from a rural area or made by rural craftsmen.  A rustic blanket box would therefore have been made by the local carpenter or cabinet maker rather than one of the more fashionable cabinet makers and joiners with London premises.  Such furniture would generally have been fairly straightforward in design and its function would have been at least as important as its appearance.  In more recent times however, it is this very simplicity rather than the place of origin that has become the defining feature of rustic furniture.  The term is applied to any furniture that looks, or has been made to look, old or used.  A more accurate description would perhaps be distressed furniture, but this might be considered a less attractive description for marketing purposes.

What made ‘rustic’ so popular?
Purchasing furniture that has been deliberately made to look old might, at first glance, seem to be a little odd (like buying ripped jeans) so just how did such an apparently strange practice acquire such mainstream acceptance?  What makes a rustic blanket box an appealing item of furniture?   

Well before about the 1950s such furniture would have been dismissed as tatty or poor quality but two major events occurred that indirectly changed this perception.  The first was a growing public acceptance that individuals should be free to express their own ideas of style and taste.  This was perhaps a natural reaction to the conformity that had been so necessary to success during the two World Wars.  By the 1960s if a person wanted to furnish their property in their own individual style with, for example a rustic blanket box, this was now more socially acceptable than it had ever been previously.

The other event that, indirectly, led to the popularity of the rustic look was the change to Britain’s taxation regime in the post-war period.  Fifties Britain was virtually broke but regeneration of bomb damaged areas together with the creation of the welfare state needed money.  The wealthy faced higher taxes and a consequence of this was that many grand houses could no longer be properly maintained.  Some opened their doors to the public to raise revenues, others opened funfairs or wildlife parks.  Many more were simply abandoned or demolished.   

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

Shabby chic is a term commonly applied to painted furniture but the concept is also relevant to furniture in wood finishes.  In both instances, supplies of genuinely distressed or shabby items could not keep up with demand, so entrepreneurs began producing new furniture that was made to look distressed or rustic – hence the arrival of the rustic blanket box.   

The rustic blanket box evolves
Early supplies of ‘new’ rustic furniture were often crudely distressed by being beaten with chains, punctured with darts or even peppered with shotgun pellets!  But gradually the methods for producing furniture such as a rustic blanket box were refined and improved.  Modern rustic-style furniture has a more convincing ‘patination,’ even though it is achieved within minutes in a modern workshop rather than through years of wear and tear.

Reclaimed furniture is, strictly speaking, furniture made from timber already previously used elsewhere, with typical contemporary examples being furniture made from old railway sleepers or telegraph poles.  But this recycling approach is far from new, as the timbers from old ships and other sources – such as the monasteries closed by Henry VIII – have always been re-used.  During the 1950s and 60s, when all timber was in short supply, wood from the packing cases that had supplied American bases in Britain was used for furniture making.