Ming Gets Bling
While vacationing in Shanghai last December, William Burns visited a furniture showroom in hopes of picking up some antique pieces to fill his home in Newport, Calif. But instead of just buying centuries-old wooden day beds and red lacquered commodes, he was struck by some newer pieces -- cabinets and TV consoles that mixed classic Chinese details like tapered legs with modern touches like CD drawers or lime-green colors.
"They are unique," says Mr. Burns, a technology company vice president. He ended up taking home 20 pieces of Chinese furniture, including a side table finished in yellow lacquer that he's using as a buffet service stand in his dining room.
After nearly 70 years on the sidelines, China is back in the business of furniture design. For years, of course, the country has produced billions of dollars of furniture made to others' designs -- reproductions of Chinese antiques, or Western-looking sofas and bedroom sets made to the specifications of big furniture chains. But now, Chinese furniture makers are offering a look of their own that blends past and present, with traditional elements like Chinese Elm or Ming-style furniture legs paired with bright colors or modern materials like chrome, glass and leather.
These pieces -- call them New Ming design -- are only now beginning to show up in U.S. stores. Earlier this year, PH Reed Contemporary Furniture in Portland, Ore., started carrying pieces from Hong Kong's Maxxa International, from a minimalist teak-veneered end table with a traditional cast brass handle for $399 to an oak cabinet with a sloping shape reminiscent of antique scroll cabinets for $1,500. San Francisco retailer Gump's offers $700 end tables that combine modern shapes with a faux-bamboo style that evokes a Ming Dynasty look. And this October at the furniture trade show in High Point, N.C., Atlanta-based Directions is preparing to launch a line of tables, chairs, desks and cabinets created by Zhu Ziaojie, a designer based in Wenzhou, China. His works include a coffee table made from a slab of tree trunk that retains the short rectangular shape of the old kang tables that sat on top of elevated heated platform beds in Northern China.
"It's a new China," says Alan Lewinger, CEO of Directions, which started importing furniture from contemporary Chinese designers two years ago. "It's not just about cheap copies. There's a lot of original stuff."
Chinese design has long been popular in the U.S., especially antique furniture from the Ming dynasty -- a rich period in China's history spanning the 14th to the 17th centuries that emphasized a less-is-more look with clean lines and high-quality craftsmanship such as tongue-in-groove construction in which joints aren't visible. Other styles followed, from the ornate carvings of the late Qing period to rough-hewn pieces of lower-quality wood made in rural China. But by the 1940s, there was little new design coming from China, due to the chaos of the country's civil war and export restrictions of the Communist regime.
As China began opening up again in the past few decades, collectors were drawn to its antique furniture, but its supply has been dwindling and prices have climbed steeply. Many buyers turned to modern reproductions instead, while others shunned traditional looks altogether, fearful that high-priced pieces billed as antiques would turn out to be forgeries. In China, meanwhile, a growing middle class has created a demand for new, modern looks.
'New Ming' styles: Chrome-and-wood adaptations of Ming dynasty horseshoe- shaped chairs; lacquered CD cabinet and TV console (above left); tall cabinet (above right), all designed by Jerry Chen.
All of that has placed pressure on furniture makers and former antique dealers to seek a niche in modern design. Taiwan-born Jerry Chen, for example, spent the past 15 years sourcing antiques in China and selling them, most recently at his new Antique and Modern Living store in Shanghai. But starting several years ago, he says, the furniture he was finding in China required hours of restoration -- if he could find it at all. He began sketching his own designs in 2000, and he started making his own furniture in the past year.
Among the pieces in his showroom: Traditional wooden medicine cabinets, featuring small drawers with rounded brass handles, which were once used to store herbs, have been reinterpreted to carry CDs. A 500-year-old plant stand was the inspiration for a set of three stackable end tables in bright red lacquer. And the L-shaped legs of an 18th-century provincial calligraphy table from the Gansu province was a model for a smaller, $1,000 version made out of northern Chinese elm that can be used as a dining table.
Blue Lacquer -- Irresistible
Nancy Carr, who owns antique store Carling Nichols in Washington, bought some of Mr. Chen's new pieces on her annual shopping trip to Shanghai in April. After nine years exclusively selling antiques, Ms. Carr decided to try a few new Asian-accented pieces, including a blue lacquered wooden table that she priced at $1,500 for her store. "They looked so fun, I couldn't resist," she says.
Of course, China is already responsible for much of the household furniture exported into the U.S., much of it in the form of mass-market furniture made for retailers such as Pier One Imports and Nieman Marcus. In spite of China's currency policy change with the yuan, the country's furniture retains its price advantage against U.S.-made furniture. In all, Chinese furniture accounts for nearly 25% of the $20 billion U.S. market in wooden household furniture, according to the Commerce Department.
Henry Wang, who started designing contemporary furniture three years ago, is pushing further. At a furniture exhibition at the Shanghai Art Museum in 2003, Mr. Wang created a set of formal side chairs, with a twist: He retained the high curving backs typical of the Ming era but suspended the chair's top railing from a wall above, using the railing as a hanging space for silk textiles.
His approach attracted Shanghai-based couple Steve Meszaros, an automotive-parts executive, and Sue Ferry, who works in charity, to Mr. Wang's Shanghai outlet. "[His designs] incorporate part of the past, but they also seem to say China is emerging from a formalism and severity and is ready to have fun," says Ms. Ferry, who bought three beds for $7,500, including one that incorporates part of an old gate into the headboard.
When it comes to the possible appeal of new Chinese design, Mr. Wang has his sights set particularly high: The latest looks, he says, will become as familiar as the Scandinavian style espoused by world-wide conglomerates like Ikea. Over time, Mr. Wang thinks the design boundaries between East and West will blur: "And as long as design is original it soon won't matter if it's made in the West or in China."
For their part, U.S. decorators and furniture-industry analysts say it's too early to say whether the look will become so widespread. "In the end, it's still a TV cabinet," says Joyce Weakley Shore, a Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based interior decorator. The furniture market is cyclical and the current trend toward minimalist contemporary styles is bound to change, Ms. Weakley Shore says. But for now, these Chinese pieces are easy to incorporate. "Asian looks blend in very well with contemporary to give the home an eclectic look," she says.
Western designers, in fact, are also embracing the New Ming. Los Angeles-based Rose Tarlow nods to classical Chinese furniture with her use of ornate black lacquer with gold-leaf painting. New York-based Kathryn Scott has a new line of East-meets-West furniture, including a canopy bed that combines Ming-style horse-hoof legs with European posts and awning. "I like using Ming-dynasty references because they used very simple shapes with few graphic patterns," she says. "It's a different way to modernize. A plain straight leg is boring."
Of course, for buyers, there are still kinks to be worked out, as Ms. Ferry and Mr. Meszaros discovered. One of the beds the couple shipped from Mr. Wang's Shanghai shop to their home in Vancouver had just one problem -- it wouldn't fit into their upstairs bedroom. "We had to cut it in half and reassemble it," says Ms. Ferry
家具设计迎来中式新风
去年12月到上海渡假时，威廉?伯恩斯(William Burns)光顾了一家家具店，希望能买些古董家具装饰自己在美国加州纽波特的家。但他最终出钱购买的不是那些有几百年历史的木质卧榻和红色漆器，而是橱柜和电视柜等新物件，这些家具既具备锥形腿等传统家具的细部特征，也具备CD盒及流行色等现代特色。
身为一家高科技公司副总裁的伯恩斯说："它们很别致。"他最终买了20件这类中国家具回国，包括一张被漆成黄色的方茶几，伯恩斯将把它用作自家餐厅的自助餐摆放台。
在靠边站了近70年后，中国风又刮回了家具设计业。当然，多年来中国已经生产了价值数十亿美元的各式家具，但这些或是仿古家具，或是大型家具连锁店定制的西式沙发和卧室家具。现在，中国的家具制造商开始生产自己设计的家具了，这些家具既有传统也有现代特色，往往是具备明式家具特点腿部设计，配合现代人喜欢的明快色调，使用的也是铬合金、玻璃和皮革等现代材料。
这些被称做新明式的家具目前只是刚刚在美国的家具店露面。今年早些时候，俄勒冈州波特兰的家具店PH Reed Contemporary Furniture开始从香港的家具供应商Maxxa International处进货，一款配有老式铜把手的柚木镶边茶几售价399美元，另一款具有古典特色的斜形橡木橱柜售价1,500美元。旧金山家具零售商Gump出售的一款茶几售价700美元，在摩登的外形设计中融入了明式家具的仿竹样式。
卡罗来纳州High Point计划在今年10月举行一场家具博览会，总部位于亚特兰大的家具零售商Directions准备在此推出一系列由中国温州的家具设计师朱小杰设计的桌、椅、书桌和橱柜。他的作品中包括一张用树干横截面制造的咖啡桌，桌面是老式炕桌那样的正方形。
Directions的首席执行长阿兰?莱温盖尔(Alan Lewinger)说，这是一批与以往不同的中式家具。这家公司两年前开始进口由中国当代设计师监制的家具。莱温盖尔说："这不再是廉价的复制品，它们包含许多原创成分。"
中式家具在美国一直广受欢迎，特别是明朝的古董家具。明式家具外观简洁、线条清晰、做工精致，惯用的卯榫结构使家具看不出接点。其次是具有华丽雕刻的晚清家具，而出自中国乡村地区的粗糙木质家具也有一定的市场。但到上世纪40年代，就几乎没有什么中国家具出口到美国了，这既是因为中国内战导致了社会混乱，也是因为中国政府采取了出口限制措施。
当中国二十多年前再度打开国门之后，家具收集家们最先深感兴趣的就是古董家具。但这类家具的供应量越来越少，价格则相应地急剧攀升。许多买家开始转向仿古家具，而其他人则对古典家具望而却步，害怕自己高价买回来的所谓古董家具实际上却是赝品。与此同时，中国不断壮大的中产阶级对现代式样的新家具开始产生需求。 所有这些因素都在推动家具生产商和古董经销商们将目光转向了现代式样的家具。以台湾出生的商人Jerry Chen为例，他15年来一直在中国各地搜寻古董然后转手出售，最近还在上海新开设了一家名为Antique and Modern Living的古董店。但从2000年起，他开始自己设计家具；从去年起，他开始自己生产家具了。
在他的家具展厅里，传统的木质药柜被赋予了新的功能，曾经被用来装草药的一个个小抽屉被改做CD盒。 而一个具有500年历史的花盆架则为一套三折叠茶几的设计提供了灵感。出自中国甘肃的一张18世纪大画案的L形桌腿则成了一款售价1,000美元木桌的原型，这种用中国北方所产榆木制作的桌子可被用作餐桌。
在华盛顿州Carling Nichols经营古董店的南希?卡尔(Nancy Carr)在今年4月赴上海进行年度采购时购买了Jerry Chen新设计的一些家具。卡尔在以往的9年中只经营古董，现在她决定也少量出售一些亚洲风格的家具，其中包括一张漆成蓝色的木桌，标价1,500美元。她说："这些家具看上去太有趣了，我简直抗拒不了它们的吸引力。"
当然，美国进口的家具已经大部分来自中国，这些家具大部分是供Pier One Imports和Nieman Marcus等零售商面向大众出售的。尽管中国最近调整了人民币汇率，但中国生产的家具与美国家具相比仍具有价格优势。据美国商务部(Commerce Department)称，美国总规模达200亿美元的木质家具市场被中国占据了约四分之一。
而三年前开始设计现代家具的Henry Wang还在扩大这一比重。为了参加2003年在上海美术馆(Shanghai Art Museum)举办的一次家具展，他设计了一套用于正式场合的靠背椅，这款椅子的别致之处在于，它保留了明式家具常有的曲状高椅背元素，但椅背却是墙面垂悬的丝织品。
Henry Wang的设计吸引了住在上海的马盛隆(Steve Meszaros)夫妇以及从事慈善事业的休?费雷(Sue Ferry)。费雷女士说，Henry Wang的设计既有古典元素，但同时似乎也在告诉人们，中国社会正在脱离形式主义和单调刻板的羁绊，已经开始变得富有情趣。她斥资7,500美元购买了Henry Wang设计的三张床，其中一张的床头板融入了老式门户的意像。
当谈到中国新式家具的未来前景时，Henry Wang志存高远。他说中式家具最终将像斯堪的纳维亚式家具一样有名。他认为，随著时间的推移，东西方家具在设计式样上将互相融合，并说："只要设计是原创的，它出自西方还是中国很快将不再重要。"
而美国的装饰设计业人士和家具业分析师们则认为，目前就断言中式家具能否广泛流行还为时尚早。佛罗里达的室内装饰师乔伊斯?威克利?绍尔(Joyce Weakley Shore)说，"说到底，这不过是一个电视柜。"她认为，家具市场有周期性，目前流行的这种简约主义现代风格终将过时。但目前为止，这些中国新式家具是很符合当前潮流的。绍尔说："亚洲特色和现代风格可以很好地结合"，给人们的家居环境赋予一种兼而有之的感觉。
事实上，新明式风格也得到了西方家具设计者的推崇。洛杉矶的家具设计师罗丝?塔洛(Rose Tarlow)说，她喜欢参考明式风格，因为这种风格十分简约，是通向现代化的另一条道路。
当然，就像马盛隆和费雷发现的那样，中式家具的买家还有一些小困难要克服。马盛隆夫妇从Henry Wang那里购买的一张床运回他们在温哥华的家后就遇到了一个问题，它无法运进楼上的卧室，为此不得不将床辟成两半然后再拼装起来。
