Patio Furniture Set - Two Couches, Four Armchairs, Two Side Tables, and Circular Table

Worrell’s Fine Furnishings operated in Palm Beach, Florida, in the 1920s and 1930s. George and Ellen Booth spent part of 1936 and 1938 in Florida, exchanging the frigid winter of Michigan for the balmier conditions of the southern United States. They may have purchased this set of bamboo furniture in order to evoke the atmosphere of their Florida vacation in Cranbrook House.

Bamboo furniture, first documented in China around a thousand years ago, became popular in England in the early nineteenth century. The lightness and durability of bamboo furnishings, the variety of shapes into which bamboo could be bent and woven, and the exoticism of the new material all helped to attract European artisans and buyers to bamboo. By the early twentieth century, bamboo furnishings, sometimes inspired by traditional East Asian designs, sometimes wholly novel, had become ubiquitous in the American as well as the European furniture market.

The original set included two sofas, six armchairs, four side chairs, two end tables and a tea table. The four side chairs are no longer in the collection. The furniture was set up in the north porch, overlooking terraced gardens descending to Kingswood Lake at the base of the hill, where it remains today. Originally built as an open porch, the north porch was enclosed in 1919, allowing the family to enjoy its views year-round, and, from 1938 forward, bask in Floridian comfort on their new furniture.

After years of wear had left their mark on the cushions, the original chenille upholstery was recreated at Cranbrook Art Academy by Lillian Kay Dawson in 1982.

Mariam Hale
2023-2025 Collections Fellow
Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research
August 2024