Young Swedish Blonde Girl With Ring Reveals In The Backyard Garden On The Terrace With Rattan Wicker Armchairs

The use of wicker presumably spread throughout Europe as the Roman Empire expanded. It has been proposed that the extensive use of wicker in the Iron Age (1200 BC – 400 AD in Europe) may have influenced the development of the woven patterns used in Celtic art. By the 1500s and 1600s, wicker was "quite common" in European countries like Portugal, Spain, and England.
Wicker received a boost during the Age of Exploration, when international sea traders returned from southeast Asia with a species of palm called rattan. Rattan is stronger than traditional European wicker materials, although the rattan stem can be separated so the softer inner core can be used for wicker.
The 1800s brought immense popularity for wicker in Europe, England, and North America. It was used outdoors as well as indoors. People in the Victorian Era believed it to be more sanitary than upholstered furniture. It was inexpensive, resisted harsh weather and was adaptable to many styles.
In the United States, Cyrus Wakefield began constructing rattan furniture in the 1850s. He first used rattan that had been offloaded from ships, where it was used as ballast, but as his designs became well-known, he began importing the material himself. Wakefield's company became one of the leading industries in wicker furniture; it later merged with the Heywood Chair Manufacturing Company (a wooden chair company that had invented a mechanical process for weaving wicker seats) to form the Heywood-Wakefield of Gardner, Massachusetts, one of the oldest and most prominent North American wicker manufacturers.