About

Soane is proud to have initiated its own rattan apprenticeship scheme to foster skills passed down over generations, continuing a 150-year tradition of weaving in Leicester. Learn first-hand the techniques involved in the creation of some of Soane’s most loved rattan designs.

Weavers Kim and Leoni will be in residence to demonstrate the extraordinary qualities of rattan and the skills they have learned in Soane’s rattan workshop in Leicester.

In 2010, after eight years working with Angraves, the last remaining rattan workshop in England, Lulu Lytle, Soane’s Founder & Creative Director, received news that it was going into administration. Faced with the possibility of these specialist skills vanishing from Britain altogether, Lulu decided to establish Soane’s own workshop in the city. Growing from just 2 makers in 2011, the team of rattan craftspeople now numbers 17, with 11 apprentices currently in training.

Despite Soane’s progress in reinvigorating rattan weaving, it must be classified as critically endangered on the Heritage Crafts’ Red List of Endangered Crafts as the only active workshop in the UK. Soane is building on its commitment to secure the continuation of rattan weaving and is certainly not complacent in believing that its work is done in training a new generation of makers!

Visit Soane’s Pimlico Road showroom to turn your hand to learning the specialist skills employed in the creation of traditional rattan furniture and discover rattan’s enduring appeal.

At 5pm on Wednesday 13th May, the world’s leading authority on palm species identification, Professor Bill Baker of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, will be in conversation with Soane Britain’s Founder, Lulu Lytle, to assess the importance of species identification as a tool for the sustainable global trade of rattan.