LIANA is a generic name for woody rainforest vines that cling to tall trees while their roots and multiple offshoots trail down to the forest floor.
Beautiful and durable, these vines were the main component of a line of Amerindian influenced furniture produced by local furniture company, Liana Cane, that was launched by Courts (Guyana) yesterday, at its Main Street location.
Ministry of Amerindian Affairs Ms. Pauline Sukhai, alluding to this years Amerindian Heritage Month theme, “Promoting sustainable livelihood and cultural heritage while transforming our village economies”, said at the launch that there is much potential for the private sector in hinterland communities. She said that while the company is not a new establishment, its product is unique. The minister voiced her expectations of seeing a wider range of Amerindian products in the near future.
Courts Country Manager, Clyde de Haas, said at the event that Liana Cane is manufacturing furniture in a way that stimulates all-round development with Amerindian communities as partners in what he described as a pioneering effort at sustainable development. He noted that the unique traditional knowledge and skills of surviving Arawak and Carib peoples in Guyana are essential to the sustainable harvesting of the liana vines which the company is named after.
He said that the company, since its start in 1994, and which was inspired by the 1992 Earth Summit, responded to the need to conserve Guyana’s extensive rain forest and began training themselves and other Guyanese in the manufacture of new, high quality cane furniture of functional and high-end design, and offered it to local and international markets, convinced that many others around the world are as concerned as they are to make choices that are good for people, the forest and the planet.
Proprietor of Liana Cane, Ms. Jocelyn Dow, said that it is possible to make furniture of beauty, functionality and durability in Guyana. She said the company used familiar products but took them into a different domain. She noted importance of identifying good practices and linking them, discussing in particular the sustainable reaping of materials.

The company’s website says that the Kufa and nibbi vines (two types of lianas) which are  “similar in look and texture to the rattan and bamboo of the Far East”,  are used for the structural elements of the furniture. The nibbi, a small vine that grows from the forest floor up the trunks of trees, is used for binding joints as well as for the weaving that gives a wicker-like appearance to some of the pieces.
A twine called tibisiri is obtained from the fibre of the ite palm which is used for the production of a cord-like material that is woven into fabric for the seats and backs of the chairs and tables, a feature unique to Liana Cane furniture.
The producers of Liana Cane stress that the production of furniture and architectural pieces from forest vines helps to combat the destruction of our forest ecosystems, threatened by two pressures. The first being the increasingly desperate search of people in poor countries for survival; the second being the movement by big timber businesses into the remaining global forest resources of the South. Since the materials are harvested with a “light ecological footprint” on the forest, in comparison with the conventional timber industry, they generate many times more jobs per unit impact.