Beautiful things never go out of style. Classics endure. …Some pieces will be welcomed as they are, but others will need tender loving care or urgent cosmetic surgery. Choose a piece if it has promise.                        –Chalmers and Hanan, Flea Market Style

Old wicker must never be passed up.

There are many vintage items that, should you come across them, must be acquired. No matter what. Any collecting guide worth its shipping costs will say that under this category falls old wicker. One must never, under any circumstances, pass up examples of old wicker. Having grown up in a house with a sunroom fitted out completely in unbelievably sturdy and well-preserved antique wicker (that my mother had inherited from an aunt and uncle’s old beach cottage), this advice made sense to me. Old wicker is charming in a pretty, old-fashioned way; my favorite of my mother’s chairs has a basket-like side pocket woven onto the arm for stowing newspapers and books. Reading. How quaint!

The advice made so much sense that soon after reading it I rescued a broken-down wicker rocker from a neighbor’s curb the night before trash day. The chair was undeniably vintage and had loads of promise for a sunroom I did not then possess; first, however, it would need to be totally overhauled. There was, for starters, no viable seat; in fact jagged sticks jutted out dangerously from all over the piece.

Reader, I acquired it. Bolstered by my reading and heedless (as usual) of Mr. Ramsay’s strenuous objections as to our abilities to cope adequately with the cast-off rocker, I acquired it.

After a few years of sitting in the corner of my garage, the vintage wicker rocker—just as broken-down as ever—made its inevitable way to my curb the night before trash day. I will admit that Mr. Ramsay told me so.

It is unlikely one will not encounter some degree of wicker in the recesses of memory. My grandmother’s shelf.

People only need to be reminded to pay attention to that which they might easily overlook, undervalue, or take for granted. Today, wicker is made and sold most often for outside spaces on covered porches and terraces. In case Mr. Ramsay is reading, I will pause here to remind him that “wicker” denotes the woven style, not the specific material of fabrication. Historically, wicker occupied interior spaces all over the home and patterns were crafted according to larger design styles (Victorian and Art Deco, for example). The bathrooms of my grandmother’s house contained what she called “wickerwork” shelves, and we children inherited from my mother (who also inherited it as a child) a white wicker doll pram we were forbidden to play with. Indeed, when one thinks back, it is unlikely one will not encounter some degree of wicker in the recesses of their memory, somewhere.

The wicker of olden days.

Wicker appeals to the vintage connoisseur for exactly the reason the armchair basket strikes me. It harkens back to architecture, photographs, décor, and lifestyles of olden days. At once pedestrian and artistic, common and unusual, wicker is essentially at home anywhere. It also has the rare knack for remaining beautiful in the midst of its own deterioration. For these inspiring reasons, it is very much at home in antique malls where it is regrettably overpriced and underesteemed.

Pedestrian and artistic.

Like so many other things, wicker furniture shouldn’t be passed up (and here I mean authentically aged pieces crafted from organic materials, not the much more practical but less charming big-box synthetic stuff that is actually built to be extra durable and intended to weather outdoor use), but I would add that unless you yourself have expertise in restoring wicker or you have cheap access to someone who does, do try to find examples that are (mostly) intact. Decorating guides make this sound easy, as if vintage wicker in lovely condition is discarded all the time, just waiting to begin the next–perhaps repainted–chapter of its life. I am always looking for this piece, but I have never yet found it on the curb. In the meantime, I will do my best to cope with my grandmother’s bathroom shelves.