"Woodwork Lessons" by Nancy Kim & Guy Rubin
(source from Imperial Tours)
Why take home a taxi-load of anonymous self-assembly flat-pack furniture, when for much the same price you can fill your apartment with elegant traditional Chinese pieces?
Opening the door to your astronomically-priced expat housing, you are appalled by the gaudiness of the furniture inside. It's so out of date that even your grandmother would smile in embarrassment. Tensions rise to the surface when visitors drop by - friends, colleagues...your boss. Is there any way of silencing their grating offers of sympathy, or of replacing their latent discomfort with open admiration?
Fortunately, there is.
Beijing is replete with sophisticated furniture sellers and skilled craftsmen, whose ready services can be employed to restore your interiors to elegant grace. But before you rush to a furniture maker, equipped with your sketch of a swimming-pool-sized daybed, or to Guang Han Tang Antiques, credit card in hand, you should prime yourself with some background information. This will mark you out as a knowledgeable rather than a naive customer.
Categories of furniture
To tilt the shopkeeper's opinion in your favor, you should start by identifying furniture pieces by their proper names. Chinese furniture began to take its present form during the Northern Song Dynasty. Since then the following terminology has been used, as shown in the table below:
To view the full article, pls go to Woodwork Lessons
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment