Frequently Asked Questions

If you raise this concern with a member of our team when you’re choosing your sofa, we will put measures in place to check if the sofa will fit, ourselves. Once we have conducted an access visit, we will make an executive decision about what steps to take next. If your sofa does not fit, you will get a full refund.

We reclaim timber and make our furniture by hand. Raft teak is repurposed into beautiful furniture but began its journey as houses, bridges, railway sleepers and boats. The blockings and indentations you may find on yours make up its character and charm. This is the same for the natural variations in the colour of the teak. The Raft artisans who handcraft your furniture in our factory in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, are local to the area. This fact, paired with their unmatched craftsmanship means that they have an intrinsic understanding of teak wood and pay respect to its roots by refusing to over-polish it. Authenticity is so important to us, so we choose not to disguise this, celebrating the beauty of the raw material’s journey. For this reason, each and every item is guaranteed to differ from the next on the surface. That’s what makes it so special.

At Raft we only use semi or full aniline hides where the method of tanning achieves a desired, natural-looking leather. The process allows the leather to breathe and produces a delicate, soft, supple leather that has a very natural feel.

By using this clear tanning process you will be able to see insect bites, barbed-wire scratches, and other environmental markings that might appear on the hide. This only adds to the character of your sofa or leather item.

Other cheaper leather sofas use corrected hides where the leathers go through a considerable process of sanding, buffing, stamping, and dyeing with a polymer (plastic) coating applied on top. This creates a uniform look and makes the leather sticky to the touch in summer and cold in winter as it does not allow the leather to breathe.

The wood used in our furniture is a natural product which has variations in grain and colour. These should be cherished as forming part of the individual character of your piece.

You may find your item has small amounts of paint which are remnants of its previous incarnation. Indentations such as chisel marks are again natural markings which are left in. We could sand every piece of our rediscovered teak to a smooth finish but this would remove the individuality of the piece.

‘Blocking’ ( image 1)is where a mortice and tenon (cross beam hole) has been filled with a block of wood. This allows us to efficiently use each piece of timber we have reclaimed.

(see pictures on below: examples of reclaimed teak markings and avaliable types).

Examples of reclaimed teak markings on our products