Painted French Coat Rack

When Japan opened to the West in the 1860s, France fell for everything it sent back, bamboo most of all, and when the real cane ran short the makers simply turned it out of wood. This little coat rack is one of those imitations, a bar of wood carved into bamboo nodes and dressed in a soft white paint that has chipped and worn down the years, four hooks shaped like cane set along it. The French called the trick bambou tourné, turned bamboo, and it put the fashionable look of the Far East onto everything from grand wardrobes to the smallest hooks by a door. Sylvie hangs it in an entry for coats and hats, the worn white paint earning its keep.

 

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