Chinese Furniture. Karen Mazurkewich
Chiang eventually bypassed the shops to deal directly with the runners. He was able to ask them about other kinds of furniture that existed in private homes and collections. To his surprise, not only were Qing pieces available, but older Ming were unearthed in remote parts of the country, like Shanxi province.
Fig. 34 This archaic recessed-leg side table, owned by scholar Chen Zengbi, features both humpback stretchers and double stretchers across the legs. Possibly from Shanxi province.
Fig. 35 Hong Kong’s Hollywood Road and Cat Street have long been famous for being the center of the antiques trade. This picture was taken at the turn of the twentieth century, but even today antique stores crowd along the narrow strip in Central. Photo courtesy Hong Kong Museum of History.
By 1986 the floodgates had opened and Chiang was joined by other Hong Kong dealers such as Cola Ma, who also established a system of runners (Fig. 36). Buyers like Chiang and Ma were on the frontlines. The next layer of dealers were Hong Kong retailers like Grace Wu Bruce and Albert Chan, and his sister Ruby, based in New York. These top dealers developed relationships with key collectors. Mimi Hung and Gangolf Geis purchased much of their huanghuali collections from Albert Chan, while Dr Shing Yiu Yip relied almost exclusively on Grace Wu Bruce. Peter Fung, a Hong Kong collector with a taste for zitan furniture, teamed up with Charles Wong, a former restorer who now runs a shop on Elgin Street.
The relationship between dealer and collector is an important one. Coherent collections are formed through alliances. The symbiosis ensures that dealers and collectors who share a common vision stand united if the market challenges provenance, age or restoration techniques. Because furniture is very difficult to date and the origins of many pieces are murky, debates are frequent and collectors tend to take sides.
Despite this, the popularity of Chinese furniture has continued to rise steadily. Any fear that antique Chinese furniture could not command prices achieved by porcelain or jade was dispelled at the Christie’s New York auction in 1996. The Fellowship of Friends, a religious organization that owns the Renaissance Vineyard and Winery in California that began collecting Chinese classical furniture in the late 1980s, sold its collection at auction for $11.2 million. At the time, it was the highest single sale of Chinese art.
Today, quality hardwood furniture continues to be snapped up by voracious buyers, but many shops now specialize in softwood furniture. Much of the furniture on the market now is from Ningbo (near Shanghai) or the northern province of Shanxi. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, Shanxi was a wealthy region and its merchant class built large numbers of courtyard mansions that needed furnishings. Until the Japanese occupation in 1937, workshops in southwestern Shanxi flourished. Isolated by the various mountains, including the Taihang Range in the east, Shanxi did not experience the same degree of warfare and destruction as China’s southern coastal regions, so homes remained intact. Subsequently, during the Cultural Revolution, coal resources in Shanxi served as a buffer against cannibalization for fuel, whereas in other parts of China furniture was often broken up and used as firewood.
A lot of the furniture sold on the market today is heavily reconstructed. Throughout southern China, thousands of factories are churning out brand new or refurbished furniture and accessories that are passed off as antiques. The fakery is fueled by the booming international market for antique Chinese furniture, and by the fact that China is running out of genuinely old pieces.
There is, however, a silver lining. A huge proportion of furniture entering the US is from China, and while the majority of it is Western style for overseas clients, a growing number of furniture makers, some former dealers, are adapting traditional Chinese design. Now that antiques have dried up, and the market is wise to fakes, dealers have turned to making contemporary furniture using elements from classical Chinese furniture. Call it the new Ming. A handful of Asian designers, such as Hong Kong-based Barrie Ho and Taiwan’s Art of Chen, are drawing inspiration from the classics to design contemporary Ming-style furniture for well-heeled clients. The furniture market has thus come full circle.
Fig. 36 This warehouse, near the Lu Jiaying Antique Furniture market (at the southern third ring road), is owned by Fan Rong, a “runner” who sources furniture in Shanxi province.
Fig. 37 Recessed-leg lute table with a plain apron and cloud-collared spandrels, huanghuali, ca. early seventeenth century, collected by Robert Piccus and his wife and sold at Christie’s New York auction in 1992. Photo courtesy Robert A. Piccus.
Jin Culture
The former Jin culture (which is now Shanxi province) represents another branch—or offshoot—of furniture development. The Jin culture evolved more slowly and its furniture is considered very archaic with simple carvings featuring floral motifs. A wall mural from Shanxi province’s Yanshan Temple (dating back to the Tang dynasty) and miniature furniture models excavated near Datong (dating back to the Jin dynasty, AD 450) feature cabinets, tables and low beds that can still be found today—an example of how little furniture evolved in this corner of the world.
Hei Hung Lu
“My grandfather and father sold archaic jade. When Communism came to Beijing in 1949, I left for Hong Kong. I was just 16 years old. My mother’s brother set up a shop there catering to Californian dealers who had starting coming in 1948. We bought furniture in Beijing and secretly shipped it to Hong Kong. At first it was easy to get the goods out. Because of the Korean War, smuggling was rife, and there was no control over antiques. Sometime around 1953 or 1955, the flood turned to a trickle and we couldn’t get the best things out. We began selling articles from refugees who had fled China to Hong Kong [in 1949] and were selling some of their possessions. As a result, there was a good internal supply of furniture for many years. In those days, nobody paid attention to softwood. They only had eyes for hardwood furniture and items no later than the Qianlong period [AD 1736–96]. Kang tables became popular as coffee tables. We often cut the legs off larger pieces to make tables. I once watched as carpenters cut the legs off of a beautiful side table for the former German Consul General of China.
“I worked day and night [for my uncle] until I finally set up by own business in 1970. I started selling small things: boxes, brush pots and jade by sourcing from local suppliers. I even went to Europe and the US between 1973 and 1979 on buying trips looking for curios. In the mid-1970s, I started buying small wooden items in Beijing. In 1976, I visited the government-operated Peking Arts & Crafts Importing and Exporting Company and the China National Arts & Crafts Import and Export Company near Chao Yang Men. These had big warehouses full of antiques. The dealers called them the ‘three houses.’ That same year, I bought a warehouse in Hong Kong so I could concentrate on furniture, and attended the Beijing Fair organized by the Hong Kong Chamber of Commerce of Arts and Crafts. The mainland desperately needed foreign currency and I needed stock. At the fair, I spent about US$100,000 on 40–50 pieces of furniture including several laohuali compound cabinets. Some of the Hong Kong dealers saw what I bought. Few people concentrated on classical Chinese furniture. I knew good pieces and quality and I was confident I could sell them. Bob [Ellsworth] was my connection to the American market. From 1976 until the mid-1980s, I continued to buy from the Peking Arts & Crafts shop. They had good things, but not early Ming. They didn’t always know what was good. I purchased a Ming tieli cupboard for less than $500 in the late 1970s. I started stockpiling because I knew the craft would run out because China was just opening up, and more competition was coming in. It was a race.
“We started buying from local dealers in Guangdong who set up a system of runners who sourced furniture and came to me later. When the market opened up in 1985, the government didn’t pay too much attention to furniture. Now everything is a hundred times more expensive.”