Since  1978, Classic Rattan, a U.S. manufacturer of Rattan and Wicker furniture based in Nicholasville, KY has been molding raw cane into beautiful furniture. Last month in  August 2024, the owner of Classic Rattan has announced that at 80 years old, and not being able to find needed new workers, he has no choice but to shut down his factory and close the doors forever.

The closure of Classic Rattan means the end of an era in U.S. manufacturing and its with very sad hearts all of us here at American Rattan say goodbye. We wish the owners Mr. and Mrs. Gaunce many wonderful blessings and a rewarding and adventurous retirement. We will so miss our daily discussions that included building our rattan furniture orders and our many other topics.

CLASSIC RATTAN STORY AS TOLD BY THEIR WEBSITE – https://classicrattan.com/content.asp?id=113510

Classic Rattan was established in 1978 to produce top-quality custom-built rattan and wicker furniture. We build much of our furniture by hand in Nicholasville, Kentucky, in the heart of the Bluegrass.

In the early 1980’s, we started importing top-quality rattan and wicker unfinished sub-assembly parts from hand-selected family-owned trading partners in the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore and mainland China.

Even today, we painstakingly custom build, custom fit, sand, finish (11 standard stain finishes and 1100 custom colors), and upholster (over 300 fabrics for your selection) the raw imported rattan and wicker frames at our factory. This process helps us deliver a custom style perfect for your dining room, living room, sunroom, screened porches or even outdoors in the lanai.

We hope you’ll enjoy our furniture as much as we have enjoyed creating it for you.

We still offer some Classic Rattan custom furniture that was cancelled by customers before Classic Rattan closed. These furniture items are brand new, never used, and beautiful. Its a wonderful opportunity to own a piece of furniture history from this American manufacturing icon.

You can view these items at this link – https://americanrattan.com/product-category/made-in-usa/classic-rattan-made-in-the-usa/

American Rattan’s Next Made in the USA Story – with the end of Classic Rattan’s extensive Made in the USA product line we have been asking ourselves here at American Rattan how in the world are we going to replace such an important part of our product catalog and furniture offerings. Luckily we were already working with another Made in the USA factory in Florida by the name of David Francis Furniture. Where we used to offer just a few products from David Francis, we have now added their entire catalog of hundreds of new furniture items and sets made right here in the USA!

So as we sadly turn the page and say goodbye to Classic Rattan, we are excited to announce our new and extensive furniture offerings from David Francis furniture! In our next blog post we will explore this new company in more detail and describe their manufacturing process and discuss many of their product offerings.

Thanks for shopping American!

Mark Mosher, aka “Rattan Man”