Rattan is a staple in wicker furniture. Here's why it can cost hundreds, even thousands, of dollars.
- Just one pole of processed rattan can cost $35.
- Rattan is a climbing palm vine that grows on rainforest trees and is harvested in the wild.
- Harvesters have to travel by boat into the rainforest and often work in dangerous conditions.
Rattan is a naturally renewable climbing palm typically used in furniture labeled as wicker, which is the term for how it's woven. And the price tag for this furniture is usually high: a real rattan chair can cost over $1,000, and as a material, it's almost three times the price of bamboo! But getting rattan is complicated. What makes it so hard to harvest? And is that the reason it's so expensive?
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