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Our selection of rustic coffee tables would easily add charm and character to a room. Whether you want somewhere to place coffee cups when entertaining, store favourite magazines or to just spread out the newspapers on we can offer something to suit all needs.  Complete the Rustic charm look in your home with a matching item from our Rustic Corner Unit collection.

What do we mean by rustic furniture?
It seems that rustic furniture has a rather different meaning in America and Canada than it does in the UK.  Americans (and presumably Canadians) use the term rustic furniture for furniture made of wood in an unworked or virtually unworked form.  Their idea of rustic furniture is that it is made of sticks or sections of tree trunk that can clearly be seen to have come from a tree.

In Britain until about 60 years ago, rustic furniture would have meant furniture from a rural area or made by rural craftsmen.  A rustic coffee table would therefore have been made by the local carpenter or cabinet maker rather than the more fashionable cabinet makers and joiners with London premises.  In more recent times however, the meaning of rustic has changed and now applies to any furniture that looks, or has been made to look, old or used – regardless of wherever it has been made.  Distressed furniture would perhaps be a more accurate description, although it is likely this was widely regarded as being a less attractive description for marketing purposes.

So what made rustic furniture so popular?
Buying furniture that has been deliberately made to look old or worn would, on the face of it, appear a little eccentric (rather like buying faded or ripped clothes) so how did it become so popular?  What is it that makes a rustic coffee table an acceptable item of furniture? Before about the middle of the 20th Century, such furniture would have been dismissed as tatty or poor quality.     

There are perhaps two major factors to explain the rise of this late 20th Century phenomenon.  The first of these was a growing public acceptance of freedom of expression for the individual: the right to exercise their own ideas of style and taste.  This was perhaps a natural reaction following two World Wars when conformity had been essential to achieving common goals and acts of individuality largely discouraged.  But by the 1960s it was no longer necessary for personal taste to be dictated by convention and if someone wanted to furnish their property in their own bizarre style with, for example a rustic coffee table, this was now more socially acceptable than it had been previously.

Another, perhaps even more obscure, factor was the consequences of changes to Britain’s system of taxation.  In the post-war era, landowners and those living in 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 were bequeathed to the nation through organisations such as the National Trust, but thousands of others ended up being demolished or falling into ruin.   

In the new, more difficult, circumstances for the owners of such properties it became accepted, and then even fashionable, to have interiors furnished with items that had once been elegant but were now decidedly faded or worn.  The new fashion for shabby chic, had arrived.  Shabby chic is commonly applied to painted furniture, but the concept of worn or faded furniture is also relevant to furniture in wood finishes.  In both cases the supplies of ‘genuine’ distressed items could not fulfil demand, so enterprising individuals began creating new furniture that was made to look distressed or rustic – hence the arrival of the rustic coffee table.   

The rustic coffee table evolves
Early examples of rustic or ‘distressed’ furniture, were actually second hand furniture that had been ‘aged’ by being beaten with chains, punctured with darts or even peppered with shotgun pellets!  Gradually however, the methods for producing rustic coffee tables and other rustic furniture were refined and improved.  Today’s rustic-style furniture has a much more convincing ‘patination,’ even though it is achieved within minutes in modern workshops rather than through years of genuine hard use.

Reclaimed furniture on the other hand is furniture made from timber already previously used elsewhere.  As such it may or may not have a rustic appearance, although it can be expected to reveal some marks indicating its former use.  Several small workshops make furniture from old railway sleepers or telegraph poles.     

The idea of reclaimed furniture is by no means new, as timbers from old ships and other sources – such as the monasteries closed by Henry VIII – have always been re-used.  In Britain in the late 1940s and 1950s, timber supplies were still rationed and so timber from the packing cases supplying American bases in Britain were used for furniture making.  Sometimes, when the wood is not second hand but has just been made to look like it, the furniture is described as reclaimed-style furniture.

High quality Rustic Coffee Tables & Reclaimed Coffee Tables at the Right Price !