Summertime and the living is easy, so says the song.  True, and the easiest way to enjoy summer is on a deep covered porch in wicker furniture covered in chintz and conjuring up images of times gone by.  Whether you live by a lake in the middle of the country, the Atlantic shore in the north east or the Pacific coast, wicker furniture is timeless.

I have owned and operated a wicker furniture business since 1988 at which time I fell in love with the authentic antique classic Bar Harbor designs that covered the porches of tennis clubs and private residences from Kennebunkport to Charleston.  Most people don't know this, but the Bar Harbor designs were not just the square, wide arm pieces that one normally sees in magazines, but rather they came in all shapes and sizes.  The backs were known to have been woven into head and shoulders designs, square with a woven shelf like top, round or square at the top with narrow arms that looked like braid, sometimes with cup holders and magazine racks, and the most popular and hard to find of them all, the wing back.

The 80s brought a rebirth of popularity that lasted well into 2000, but as the popularity increased, my sources for authentic Bar Harbor funiture decreased as interior designers and their clients gobbled up what has remained in our country's inventory since the turn of the century.  Fortuately, in 1990, I found a modern source for the Bar Harbor style wicker furniture made like the old in size, design and quality and have been selling it ever since to replace the ever disappearing originals.  No one (except maybe me) would be able to tell the difference. Some day they, too, will be part of grandma's legacy.

However, around the same time that I started buying, repairing and selling Bar Harbor wicker furniture, I was presented by one of my antique "pickers" with a five piece matching suite of wicker furniture woven by hand of material that resembled brown kraft paper twisted over wire.  It not only resembled it, but was in fact brown kraft paper twisted over wire.  This opened a whole new obsession for me in the wicker of the Art Deco era---an era in which wicker was commonplace in front rooms, bedrooms and dining rooms, not just the porch any more.  More on this fabulous furniture design in upcoming blogs.