Wicker furniture set to exit?

That is the predicament of Parameshwar, a skilled rattar who re-canes wicker furniture like garden chairs and elaborate antique easy chairs. He knows his specialised skills as also those who have got work done by him.

But most of the days, like winking at the girl in the dark, Parameshwer sighs and yawns without being able to link with those who may have work for him. For, he has no easy way of projecting his skills to the prospective customer.

For the uninitiated, wicker furniture ruled the roost in heritage mansions of the aristocracy in Mangalore and other cities. One of the fading pieces of furniture in heritage mansions, like the century-old Kalmady House near PVS Junction, is a wicker easy chair with its body-hugging curves, totally six feet in length.

A person can relax on them, like in the sleek extendable sleeper seats in planes and luxury buses. Their heavy wooden frame is linked with wickers derived from a slender, pliant twig and woven tight in a criss-cross pattern.

The same pattern is replicated for the seat and back-rest of garden chairs with steel frames which also find place in drawing rooms. There are also upright wicker chairs with wooden frames.

After years of heavy and rough use, the cane weaves sag and need re-caning, For Mangalore, such canes, called Nagara Betha, came from Shiradi, Hassan and other Malenadu areas.

In recent years, many such cane-based chairs have been mothballed or junked because there is no economic and reliable supply of such cane and no skilled workers on tap for re-caning. On the material supply side, now synthetic plastic strips have replaced the old single-colour cane – with variety of colours to choose from. Yet, the scarcity of skilled workers like Parameshwer has led to the rapid decline of cane chairs.

These are substituted by mass-produced moulded plastic bucket chairs. Also, the basic steel frame of the wicker chair has 20 rods with 20 welded joints. It is too laborious to fabricate in today’s high-wage scenario.

I had enjoyed the comfort of reading and relaxing on two wide-bottomed plastic cane chairs for the last 40-odd years, they having followed me, on my retirement, from Mumbai to Mangalore. While their last re-caning stood firm for 30 years, they started fraying at the outer frame rim.

At this point, I read about a visually-impaired person, Pramod Nayak, who had been taught the re-caning skill by the National Association for the Blind. He is now working at the Deputy Commissioner’s office in Mangalore and confidently does re-caning work for his organisation.

While I was seeking his advice on the subject, contacting him at his residence near Jilla Panchayat Canteen in Urwa, someone else told me about Parameshwer who lives at Gorigudda, rear-side of Fisheries College and next to the local post office and Canara Bank branch (6585170). He did my two chairs with professional efficiency, with the end product delighting me. This tempted me to help him out to find customers through this modest projection.

Forty-seven year-old Parameshwer’s tryst with re-caning goes back to his primary school days when, on way to the government primary school near Capitanio, he would see a shop at Pumpwell Circle (now Mahavir Circle) doing re-caning work. At the age of 10, his father having died by then, he joined this shop earning Rs. 2 a week - in addition to expenses met by the shop owner.

When the shop closed, after five years, on the death of the owner, Parameshwer started on his own as a free-lancer, as he could not afford setting up a shop. Along the way, he mentored four youth in re-caning skills. They could not make a living out of it and branched into painting and driving. Parameshwer soldiers on getting work for 15/20 days in a month, doing painting or acid-cleaning work at other times.

Re-caning work has an ironic angle. If one did a good, lasting work, it reduces and forecloses the chances of re-work. If he does a bad job, he is written off for future jobs.

The solution is to have a wider market. That is where an Employment Exchange-type of organisation or the District Industries Centre can help by linking skills with demand. Even customers would welcome such add-on service by these bodies which have now lost their original focus. Otherwise, we will see the exit of wicker furniture.


There is an antique angle to this. According to an anonymous epigram, antiques are things one generation buys, the next generation gets rid of and the following generation buys again. That is why the sign on secondhand stores reads: We buy old junk. We sell antiques. Before you junk old furniture, think again about its restoration and owning an antique.