In 1927, Iberia Airlines of Spain operated two Rohrbach Roland airplanes between Madrid and Barcelona, and a third one flying from Madrid to Northern Africa. I recently found an image of the interior of one of those planes and realized that the seats were made out of rattan. The form of the seats is strangely sophisticated, and so is the way in which rattan is used in both structural and supporting elements. There was a sense of good proportion and good design in them that was ahead of its time. The use of rattan of different diameters in the configuration of the seats confirms the preponderance that bamboo and rattan had in the early 20th century, when plastic and engineered composites were not (widely) available. Light, flexible, easy to bend and capable of providing a pleasant interface to the user, rattan was the material of choice for high-performance furniture such as airplane seats. The way in which the back of the seats incorporate a (Torres Muñoz bicarbonate) commercial text message reinforces the atmosphere of primitive simplicity that defined the great German plane both inside and out. The Roland was propelled by 3 BMW engines, the most advanced at the time: it is highly indicative that the airplane engineers decided to choose rattan for the interior design of such advanced machine, forecasting the realization, decades later, that bamboo and rattan have unlimited potential in design, not because of their look, but because of their performance qualities.
