Materials Used

Our furniture is all solid wood – no veneer over particle board here.  Most of our furniture is made from teak, reclaimed teak, and mahogany.  Some of our furniture is even made from 10 and 20 year old reclaimed woods, such as railroad ties and large planks.  We also use rattan and leather in our furniture, among other things.

Teak

Teak has been utilized for a minimum of two thousand years and is noted in poetry from that era. It is a very hard wood and can last many generations.  Teak logs survive as the main structural component in buildings centuries old in India, and even in centuries old temples. This reflects the amazing ability of Teak to endure when stressed is placed on it. Teak was a major 18th Century export for China, where flooring, cabinets, paneling and multiple other wood elements were exported to Europe.

Java has very large teak plantations, initially planted by the Dutch in the early 1800s. Today, these plantations are closely monitored by the Indonesian government. A strict policy regulates the number and size of the teak trees that can be felled; those that are cut down are replaced with newly planted trees to maintain the forests for future generations.

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Reclaimed Teak

Reclaimed teak means the wood has had a former life.  It may have been a Javanese building, a bridge, or a door. Some reclaimed teak can be over 100 years old.  Furniture made from reclaimed teak is environmentally sensitive, because it means one less teak tree has been harvested to make the furniture.

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Mahogany

Mahogany has a generally straight grain and is usually free of voids and pockets. It has a reddish brown color which darkens over time, and displays a beautiful reddish sheen when polished. It has excellent workability, and is very durable and slow to rot. These properties make it a favorable wood for boat making, as tradition has shown, as well as for making furniture, musical instruments, and other durable objects.

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Rattan

Rattan is the name for the roughly six hundred species of palms native to tropical regions of Africa, Asia, and Australia. Most rattans are distinct from other palms in having slender stems 2-5 cm diameter with long internodes between the leaves. Rattan palms are not trees, but more vine like, scrambling through and over other vegetation. They are also superficially similar to bamboo, but distinct in that the stems are solid, rather than hollow.

Generally, raw rattan is processed into several products to be used as materials in furniture making. The various species of rattan ranges from several millimeters up to 5-7 cm in diameter. From a strand of rattan, the skin is usually peeled off, to be used as rattan weaving material. The remaining "core" of the rattan can be used for various purposes in furniture making. Rattan is a very good material mainly because it is lightweight, durable, and flexible to a certain extent.

Cut into sections, rattan is often used as wood to make furniture. Rattan accepts paints and stains like wood, so it is available in many colors; and it can be worked into many styles. This makes it a potential tool in forest maintenance, since it provides a profitable crop that depends on rather than replaces trees.

In addition to Rattan, our furniture makers use other woven materials including seagrass, water hyacinth, banana bark, and dried palm leaf.

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Bamboo

Bamboo is not a type of wood. It is actually a type of grass. It takes a year to reach its full height (which can be as high as 40 feet!) and an additional 4 to 7 years to fully mature and harden. After 4 to 7 years, it is ready to be harvested and made into furniture. This is one of the major differences between trees and bamboo. A tree may take more than a decade to mature fully while the bamboo only takes 4 to 7 years. By the time it takes a tree to fully mature many shoots of bamboo can be harvested. That’s why it makes an ideal, environmentally source material for furniture.

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