Rustic furniture ranges and manufacturers
Together with distressed painted ranges, rustic furniture ranges are in general suited to those with more adventurous tastes in interior style. Both types of furniture have their origins in rooms furnished on limited means that, almost by accident, produced a charm of their own. This shabby chic has become mainstream and it is now accepted that new, distressed (or rustic) furniture can have a legitimate appeal.
One of the most convincing collections of distressed heavy oak furniture is from one of the smaller suppliers, DFP or
Direct Forest Products. This modest little company from Suffolk (dfpl.co.uk) supplies the industry leading
Trafalgar range of rustic oak furniture and has recently introduced another rustic range, the
Radstock range that it says is made from reclaimed pine. For truly rustic furniture with a painted finish, then the best choice might well be the often underrated
Provence range from
PD Global Ltd.
This company, found at pdglobal.co.uk, is a veritable Goliath in comparison to the David that is DFP, and its other rustic ranges include the
Old Cotswold range in oak, the rather exotic
Granary range in acacia wood and a pine range sold by us under the name
Pioneer range. A feature of the Pioneer range is that the timbers are deliberately rough sawn, to achieve a kind of locally-made, rough and ready, frontier-style effect.
It is an appealing look and the same technique is also convincingly executed by pine experts Country Pine Warehouse or
CPW, with its
Rough Sawn ranges of bedroom, living and dining room furniture. It is not surprising that this company, which can be found at cpwfurniture.co.uk, should achieve such effective results as it was founded on stripping and renovating genuinely old and rustic pine furniture.
For a true hybrid between contemporary design and rustic style, consider the
Hampton range of white oak furniture, recently introduced by
Kettle Containers Ltd of Northamptonshire. Kettle-containers.co.uk or Kettle Interiors as it is now known, is a well established company and has produced a number of highly successful rustic ranges, including the
Regency range and its heavy oak equivalent of the Trafalgar range, the
Rutland range. The company’s
Hampshire range set new standards for interesting rustic furniture when it was launched as it included ceramic handles that give it a decidedly Victorian flair.
Mention has been made of heavy oak ranges and
Devonshire Pine Ltd offers not one but two rustic-style heavy oak ranges. First the company launched its aptly-named
Rustic Oak range of bedroom, living and dining room furniture, featuring heavy black metal fittings and rounded ‘worn’ cabinet edges. It followed this up with the slightly more refined
Distressed Oak range which has a less severe wear on corners and sports lighter, brass-effect fittings. Despite its name, Devonshire Pine is an accomplished supplier of good quality oak furniture (as well as pine), producing several contemporary ranges which can be seen on devonshirepine.co.uk.
Still with the ‘heavy oak’ category of rustic furniture, another Devon supplier to produce such a range is
ASL from Exeter. This company’s offering for the line up is the
Brampton range, which includes bedroom and living/dining furniture.
Mexican furniture is generally regarded as being in a rustic style and fans of the genre appreciate the
Amalfi range from
Core Products Ltd. This company supplies almost all self-assembly ranges sold by Right Price Furniture because the quality of the materials and quality of construction are noticeably better than many of its competitors.
More about rustic furnitureThe practice of distressing furniture to give it the appearance of age or wear, has been practiced for a long time. Even during the Victorian period, there was a market for furniture made to look like it had accumulated a great age. Today such techniques have gained widespread acceptance, with furniture being sold in the UK under the term rustic furniture.
Now while some ranges of rustic furniture could be regarded as being rural in origin or style, many are simply styles with a distressed finish. In these cases however, it is still more acceptable to describe them as being rustic furniture.
The Rustic look has been popular since at least the eighties and shows no sign of diminishing. Indeed if anything it has become more developed, diversifying into different specialist areas, for example New England, French, Cotswold and Colonial.
Background
Before World War 2 country properties, and the lifestyle of most of their occupants, had remained largely unchanged since the 18th Century or earlier. But in post war Britain, public expectations changed and the archetypal ‘country cottage’ was shunned in preference to modern housing developments which offered such modern attractions as electricity, inside toilets and bathrooms.
During the sixties and seventies increasing prosperity, the developing network of mains utility services and greater private car ownership made these cottages more attractive and their prices started to rocket. More recently the desire for country properties has been fuelled by changes in agriculture bringing redundant outbuildings and farmsteads onto the market.
Options available
At Right Price Furniture there are several collections of furniture in our rustic group and elsewhere suitable for achieving the right look.
Painted furniture is typical of the French country peasant look; perhaps emulating the Baroque styles of the 17th Century. Our
Victorian painted furniture is ideally suited to this look.
For a traditional English country furniture style, choose from the Rustic Oak collections such as the Trafalgar or Brampton. Our ranges combine the comfort and practicality of modern furniture with the look and feel of furniture from the 14th or 15th Century.
If the late Victorian / early 20th Century period is the aim, then consider the
Hampshire range as the overall style and finish is very in keeping with the period. Decorative touches include the ornate Victorian-style handles, while an unusual feature is the decorative ceramic inlays on some items that are perhaps reminiscent of the famous enamel signs for Pears Soap or Colman’s Mustard.
The New England look is more of an amalgam of early European settlers of America and austere religious sects, most notably the Shakers, Amish and Mennonites. Characteristics are an avoidance of ornamentation and a functionality that inspired the modernists in the 1930s. Plain styling, such as the Devonshire Pine
Old Mill ranges will provide bedroom furniture and there are several chairs from which to choose in our Chairs category.
Furniture with a distressed finish is any furniture deliberately marked or damaged to suggest it is not brand new. The practice goes back at least to Victorian times when the country’s phenomenal rise in wealth and global dominance spawned a fascination with its past. Collecting and owning
antique furniture became fashionable, so the practice of distressing newly-built furniture arose to meet a demand that could not be satisfied by the genuine article.
This largely covert, and not always entirely honest, practice began to lose its stigma in the 1950s and 1960s when the look of furniture became more important than its pedigree. Several stories appeared in the press and on television about furniture traders who, much to the bemusement of the older generation, were openly ‘distressing’ furniture with the use of chains, darts and various other tools. Nevertheless, alongside the opening of stores like Habitat and, in Sweden,
IKEA, demand steadily grew for distressed furniture.
Today distressed furniture is widely accepted and regarded as highly desirable for interiors where a ‘brand new’ piece of furniture would look out of place to contemporary tastes.
Getting the look of Distressed Furniture
At Right Price Furniture there are several collections of furniture in our rustic category and elsewhere suitable for achieving the right look. Distressed painted ranges in styles known as Baroque, Rococo or simply French style include the
Bergere, Epernay,
Canterbury, Provence and Victorian collections.