BH | Studio Whitby Rattan Oval Console Table

Rattan, the supple stem of a climbing palm, reached Western homes through nineteenth-century trade with Southeast Asia. By the late Victorian years woven rattan furniture had settled onto porches and into sunrooms across America and Britain, and it came back in force in the relaxed rooms of the 1960s and 1970s.

This one is tall and slender: a narrow, round-ended top with a thick rolled rim, raised on a pair of woven clover-shaped pedestals of three rounded lobes. Every surface is wrapped in rattan, in Mink or Flax. The pedestals stand well apart, leaving a wide stretch of open floor for a bench or two lidded baskets, and the shallow top lets it hug a wall or the back of a sofa without stealing space from the room. It holds up to 44 lbs, and only light assembly is needed.

Stand it behind a sofa that floats in the middle of a room, with a pair of lamps and a framed photograph or two along the top, and baskets below for throws and magazines. In a hallway it makes a soft, natural landing place for keys and mail, with a woven mirror above. The rattan warms a white or sage-green room and sits beautifully with dark wood, leather and a rug in faded reds.