Remembering Wicker: The Craftsmanship We’ve Forgotten
Last weekend, I found myself staying in this drafty old cabin tucked into the western slopes—no Wi-Fi, no smart thermostat, just silence and the burn-pop-burn of firewood in a rust-flecked stove. Couple mismatched mugs in the cupboard, curtains thin as breath, and a damp smell like the place only ever gets occupied in desperate or nostalgic seasons. It was perfect.
I’d thrown my gear in the corner and was halfway through re-threading a busted binding strap when I noticed this chair tucked awkwardly by the window. Wicker. Or something like it. No cushion, faded to that greyish driftwood tone everything gets eventually, and sagging just enough to make you second guess sitting in it. But I was tired, so I did.
And nothing broke.
No snap, no collapse, no embarrassing tumble onto the frigid floor. Just a few long creaks like it was waking up after a long nap. But once I settled in, I realized—I wasn't just sitting, I was remembering. Not some specific moment, but a texture of living I hadn’t felt in a while. The kind where things weren’t comfortable because they were new, but because they were familiar. Earned. This chair didn’t hide its age. It didn’t pretend to be anything it wasn’t. There were splinters and weird knots in the weave, and at least one piece of wicker had snapped free and jabbed me in the thigh. But it held.
And somehow, in that beat-up cabin, sitting quietly in a chair older than my dad, I started wondering: When the hell did we forget how to make things like this?
I mean, wicker used to be this ancient, handcrafted thing—woven plant fibers, no screws, no glue, just tension and touch and skill passed down over centuries. People used it to build cradles and coffins, storage and seating. Real rain would soak it, sun would bleach it, but it aged like driftwood or old denim—honest. That’s the word I keep coming back to.
These days, “wicker” barely means anything anymore. It’s marketing language slapped onto plastic chairs molded to look woven but aren’t woven at all. Stackable, spray-tanned, hollow junk that fades and cracks within two summers and ends up pressed against a dumpster behind someone’s AirBnB. It’s not craftsmanship. It's an aesthetic knockoff.
And I get it—real wicker takes time, and time costs money, and we don’t build for longevity anymore. We build for volume and speed and shipping efficiency. We build for spring sales at big-box stores where you can buy a whole patio set for the same price my friend just spent on a single handmade mug. It’s not just wicker. It’s everything.
We want old souls in new clothes. Instant heritage. A pre-fab story you can assemble with an Allen key and a hashtag. But the old wicker chair in that cabin didn't want to be looked at. It wanted to be used. Patched, sun-faded, uneven. The kind of thing someone built not to impress dinner guests but to last across decades—through storms and kids and firewood stacks and coffee spills. It’d been lived with, not “styled.”
I guess what got me, sitting there, was how little we notice the downgrade. Like frogs in boiling water, we swapped the real for the easy without ever thinking it might matter. And maybe it doesn't, most days. But when you're alone, fire-soft and quiet, staring at your boots drying by the stove, it does matter—if only because you feel that difference in your bones.
A friend of mine once said that time doesn’t really care what we make—it just wears things down. But what we build decides how they wear. Some things fall apart. Others weather. And sometimes, in an old cabin with soggy firewood and a kettle that whistles like it has emphysema, you realize you’re sitting in something that was made to rust and crack and groan, sure—but never quit.
Wicker used to be that kind of thing.
Maybe it still can be.
