I’ve just one more day left in Shanghai as I fly back to the UK tonight. It has been a brief few days here, catching up with the workshop that produces our main Classical Chinese furniture range – discussing some new pieces and checking out some of the items that are either already finished or are part way through being produced for our next shipment.

I also met up with the supplier that produces our silk wallpaper. We have been working on quite a large project for several months and the seventeen panels for this particular customer have just been completed, so I was able to inspect these before they are sent over to the UK. The overall design was fairly classical, with bamboo and blossom, birds and butterflies, but the customer also had some specific requests for certain elements. These included pheasants, a rabbit and a rat! I had seen photos of the finished wallpaper before, but you can only appreciate the quality of the paintings and workmanship that goes into it by seeing it for real. The fine detail – up to individual feathers on the birds and even hair on the rabbit and rat, are exquisite. I’m looking forward to seeing the panels installed in the near future and hope to be able to share some photos of the finished product on our website later.

Yesterday was spent finalising details for the Chinese antique furniture that we will ship from Beijing in a month or so, and then later I visited the Shanghai Expo together with Michael and Anita from the Shanghai workshop. The Expo is a huge event running for several months until the end of October. It is effectively a chance for the world’s nations to show what they offer in terms of architecture, culture, business and investment opportunities, with hundreds of pavilions built to hold the exhibits of each country. These ranged from the smallest – Macau, Lichenstein and Luxembourg all had a presence, right up to the huge, imposing Chinese pavilion. Most of the pavilions are temporary structures, to be pulled down after the Expo is finished, but I understand that the Chinese one will stay in place, becoming a permanent exhibition to Chinese culture and development.

I was prepared for the size and scale of the Expo but I wasn’t prepared for the sheer numbers of people. The event seems to have received little publicity in the UK, but has been heavily pushed in China, so there are hundreds of thousands of people visiting from all over the country. I was told that on any given day there are up to 400,000 people visiting! This meant that the queues to get into the vast majority of pavilions were in some cases over five hours long – one friend of Michael’s had apparently waited 8 hours to get into the German pavilion! I’m not sure whether this says more about the endurance and patience of the Chinese or the visitors’ optimism and herd mentality, as from what I could tell the interiors of most pavillions were interesting rather than awe inspiring.

We had managed to get hold of some ‘VIP’ tickets for the Chinese pavilion, which meant we had to wait only about an hour and a half to get in rather than six hours. The crowds were unbelievable but it was just about worth the wait – if only to experience the whole atmosphere with such large numbers. The exhibit itself was split into three sections, telling the story of how Chinese homes and life had changed over the centuries, the development of town planning and a final section looking at the future. There were mock ups of Chinese homes through the 70s, 80s, 90s and present day and it was interesting to note that western style furniture was the norm in the earlier decades, with more traditional Chinese furniture making an appearance only in the present day section in the form of a couple of horseshoe armchairs, albeit given a modern twist.

I’m just about to check out from my hotel before going off to the Shanghai market to pick up one or two last minute accessories to ship over with our next container. Then it will be a final dinner with everybody from the workshop (I can recommend snake after the other night – very much like chicken), before heading for the airport. It’s been a very productive ten days or so but it will be good to get home. We will be working on all the antique pieces that I’ve lined up from this trip over the next few weeks so we should have these available to view on the main website soon.

Signing off from Shanghai!

James

Back at the hotel and a chance to draw breath after a couple of hectic but productive days around Beijing. The rain on Friday turned to beautiful, clear blue skies in the past couple of days – or at least as clear as Beijing gets in August.

The agenda for Sunday was to visit Panjiayuan, the main market in the city for smaller antiques and handicrafts. I normally source smaller items for our showroom and website either through the workshop in Shanghai, or by visiting smaller wholesale markets with our main antique supplier. So despite coming to Beijing for several years this was the first time I had visited the market. The sheer scale and number of traders is bewildering – with thousands of stalls selling everything from huge stone sculptures to ‘relics’ from the cultural revolution.

You’ll find a dizzying array of artwork of varying styles and quality, pottery, jade, jewellery, brassware and just about anything else that has some vague connection with the world of ‘antiques’ – I even spotted a couple of old telephones and a transistor radio. In among the general bric-a-brac are some interesting items and I picked up some lovely little framed paintings and some nice silver bracelets, made by the ‘Miao’ ethnic minority in Southern China.

If you’ve been to the showroom in Saltaire then you will probably have seen the large silver necklaces, traditionally worn by the same tribe. We display these on stands as they make great ornaments and we have a few in frames – we’ll get around to putting some of these up on the website soon.

Yesterday I met up with one of the antique ‘agents’ that work here in Beijing. Normally I deal directly with one or two antique workshops that we now have a close relationship with and who we know will provide us with beautifully finished, quality pieces. This time round I wanted to get a further idea of what else was available with a view to picking up some alternative styles and finishes, so that we can offer a greater variety of pieces in the future.

Agents have relationships with several workshops and have a good knowledge of which one will be able to supply which type of piece. So this is a good way to get around to visiting a large number of warehouses in a short space of time and to source specific pieces for certain customers. I have quite a long list of requests and I’m pleased to say that, after an exhausting day in which we managed to get to six or seven different workshops (I lost count in the end) I was able to find pieces that should fit the bill for most of these. I also picked up several other pieces, including some wonderful painted cabinets, trunks and sideboards from Shanxi province.

Among the more unusual pieces that I lined up to ship with our other antiques at the end of September was this lovely sideboard from Qinghai in western China. It includes three shallow drawers at the top, a shelf in the middle divided into four sections and cabinet space at the bottom. Originally the two sets of doors with moulded frames would have given the only access to the lower section. This design is typical of furniture from Qinghai, with the idea being that it made it more difficult for would be thieves to grab valuables from the less accessible recesses of the cabinet. The other four doors were initially fixed panels, but have been converted to make the cabinet more practical for the modern day.

Everything else about the cabinet, including the simple carving that frames the left and right shelf sections and the now faded paintings of flowers on each of the drawers and door panels, is entirely original. I’ve not seen anything quite like this piece before and I think it would work wonderfully in a reception room today as a very unusual book cabinet.

This morning was spent at another market putting together an order for some more silk items for the showroom. Photo albums, notebooks and boxes – all perfect gifts for Christmas as they will arrive at the end of October. Then it was back to our main antique supplier’s workshop to finalise a few things for the next container.

Tomorrow I fly to Shanghai for a few days to visit the workshop where our Classical Chinese range is produced. The guys there have managed to get some tickets for the Shanghai Expo, so I’m looking forward to visiting there on Friday – more to follow on that later.

I arrived in Beijing yesterday and woke up with a jet lagged early start this morning to the pouring rain. This is the first time I’ve been here at this time of year and the humidity is something of a surprise – like a wet weekend in Yorkshire but with added heat. After the usual battle through traffic we reached the workshop on the eastern outskirts of the city and armed with coffee and umbrellas started to tour the warehouses . We already have a number of pieces lined up that we didn’t have room for on our last shipment of antiques, but the majority of space is still to fill, so I was pleased to see the usual good variety of high quality antiques. The problem is always which pieces to leave behind rather than choosing enough to fill a container.

Among the highlights today were a number of lovely pieces from Gansu province – painted grain chests that with the addition of doors at the front have been converted into more practical sideboards, as well as a couple of very elegant altar tables in walnut. I also picked out a few beautiful painted trunks from Mongolia and Qinhgai, some classic end cabinets from Beijing and a very interesting pair of ‘book trunks’ in camphor wood and with the original hardware intact, designed to be carried with poles when travelling. I hope to have all these photographed and up on our website within the next few weeks and they will be shipped over towards the end of September, arriving in the UK around the end of October.

In addition to the antiques that we will definitely ship, there were a few particularly special pieces – ones that I would class more as being towards the serious collector market than the pieces we normally import into the UK. These included a pair of rare, beautifully decorated cabinets from Qinghai province. These type of cabinets are becoming quite difficult to source even as single pieces, particularly with the original paintings in such excellent condition and with the original hardware still in place like these two. To find a matching pair still together is almost unheard of.

More unusual still is that one of the cabinets includes an inscription on the inside rear panel, giving details of when and why the cabinets were made. They were produced around 150 years ago during the Guangxu period of the Qing Dynasty, and were presented to celebrate the establishment of a new business – certainly beats having a D-list celebrity cut a ribbon! The paintings show prized possessions such as vases of flowers, books and bronzes, a common design for Qinghai furniture and designed to denote the status of the owner – in this case the business entrepreneur.

Typically of Qinghai furniture, the doors are narrow, set within the painted panels either side. Two larger doors give access to the upper section which holds one shelf inside, while a second, smaller set of doors open into the bottom part. Perhaps not the most practical design, but it does allow for the paintings to be perfectly balanced across the front surface of the cabinets.

The photos shown here, taken on a dismal day with very poor light in the warehouse, by no means do these beautiful pieces justice, but we will have them photographed properly and add them up onto our website soon, so look out for further details. They are perhaps a little expensive to ship without first having a buyer so I doubt we will include them on our September shipment, but if you would like to find out more then give me a call in early September when I’m back from China!

It’s off to the markets tomorrow to check out some smaller pieces that we can ship with our furniture and then I’m due to visit a few other antique suppliers on Monday to see if we can choose some extra pieces to complement what we already have lined up. More details soon!

James

Off to China again in a few days for the sourcing trip that never happened a few months ago due to the infamous Icelandic volcano! It’s been a long time since I was last out there, so it will be good to catch up with everybody again. I will start with five days in Beijing, which I will use to select the next collection of Chinese antique furniture as well as smaller accessories to ship with them in the next month or two.

First stop will be the main antique restoration workshop that we deal with, a purpose built complex on the outskirts of the city. I have dealt with this workshop now for around five years and the quality of the pieces they are able to source and their skill in restoring them are consistently high. They usually have some beautiful pieces from western China – Qingha, Gansu and Inner Mongolia, as well as furniture from Shanxi and Beijing which is more commonly available. As I did for the last container of antiques, it is possible to choose from photographs as I know that the quality will be good, but nothing beats seeing these wonderful pieces for real to appreciate the proportions, detail and finish.

This time around I also plan to visit a couple of antique workshops that I have not been to before. I’m confident that their furniture will again be towards the higher end of the market and that they will have some slightly different pieces available so that we can offer some further variety in our antique collection. As usual I am going out to China with a list of specific requirements from several customers for antiques, so I’m hopeful that I will be able to come up with a few options through the various suppliers that I will visit. If you are reading this and are looking for something specific then now is the time to get in touch and I’ll do my best to source this for you in the next couple of weeks!

After Beijing it’s over to Shanghai to catch up with the workshop where our main Chinese Classical furniture range is produced. We’ve been busy creating one or two new pieces to add to this range recently, so I’m looking forward to seeing these before our next shipment of reproduction furniture leaves in mid September. These pieces and the new pieces in our Contemporary Asian furniture range will be on the website in the next few weeks so more to follow on that later.

I also plan to update the blog while I’m over in China with details of any particularly nice pieces that I come across for our antique container, so check the blog out over the next couple of weeks.

We source most of our Chinese antique furniture through suppliers in Beijing as we find that in general the selection and quality there tends to be better.  However there are also dozens of antique warehouses in Shanghai, where most of our reproduction furniture is produced, so where time allows it is always good to check one or two of these out when I am visiting.

On my last trip to Shanghai I went with Mr Zhang, the owner of our main reproduction workshop, to a warehouse hidden away in the outskirts of the city. This particular warehouse gathers antiques from all around China and sells them on in an unrestored condition to other workshops in Shanghai, who then restore the furniture before selling to private customers or for export. The nice thing about this type of warehouse is that you can see pieces ‘in the raw’, with all their faults and original finish, making it easy to sort out the higher quality pieces from the lower end.

Mr Zhang originally started his working life as an antique restorer and he has an excellent eye for quality, so with his nods of approval I selected a number of smaller accessories to ship with our upcoming container of reproduction furniture, as well as a few particularly striking antiques. Each of these was in excellent condition with original hardware, paintings and lacquer still intact. They were then transported to Mr Zhang’s workshop for some minimal restoration – effectively just cleaning and polishing, and weeks later they have finally arrived in the UK. We have been photographing these pieces this week so they will be up on our website very soon, but I thought I would offer a sneak preview and some more information about my favourite piece – a truly stunning low kang table from Shanxi province in north central China, dating from the beginning of the 20th century.

In the colder northern parts of China such as Shanxi province, homes would include a brick or earth platform in the central living area, heated from below. Known as a ‘kang’ this was the centre for everyday activities, with members of the household sitting or reclining directly on it rather than using seating. Various types of low level furniture were developed to use on the kang, including tables like this one. This particular design, with three drawers aligned next to each other, is referred to in Chinese as ‘lian san’ and the piece would have doubled as a coffer for storing household items as well as being used as a table – possibly for serving food or as an altar.

Coffers included secret storage areas, accessible only by removing the drawers above. This particular one is a wonderful example of the style, although in this case the space below the drawers is not used, with the four lower carved panels being only a facade. The open carving on the lower apron is superbly worked and continues to the front feet, which are adorned with a scrolling motif. The relief carving on the three drawers is in a common interlocking leaf design, while the four lower panels are carved with recurring swastikas, a buddhist symbol for eternity and long life. The dark elm wood is a little worn in places but the piece is in superb condition and would grace any modern reception room as a large coffee table.

This and the other pieces that I sourced on my last visit to Shanghai, including an unusual painted sideboard also from Shanxi and a beautiful painted chest from Gansu, will be up on our website in the next couple of weeks. If you would like any further details of these then give me a call or contact me through the Shimu website. We are also already starting to line up our next shipment of antiques from Beijing so I hope to have some more pieces available to view soon.

After weeks on the water our latest shipment of Chinese antique furniture has now arrived into the UK, due into the warehouse in the next few days. As usual, as well as the cabinets, trunks and other pieces, there are plenty of wonderful smaller accessories to come to the showroom here in Saltaire, so we are looking forward to another day of unpacking and arranging for display.

Among the antique furniture are some more beautiful camphor chests, such as the one shown here. The Chinese never hung clothes vertically as we do in the West, but would instead fold and store them either in tall cabinets or in blanket chests like this. They were used throughout China both in the home and for traveling, and were often made in stackable sets. In central and western parts of China the chests were often made of pine, fir or other similar woods and brightly painted (see some of our wonderful painted trunks from Qinghai province), but in northern and eastern parts they tended to be plainer, made either from elm or camphor wood, or sometimes covered with leather and lacquered.

Camphor wood was popular partly for its attractive grain, particularly in certain species of the wood such as the variety known as ‘tiger skin’, which was especially prized. However camphor also has a very distinctive, natural aroma which acts as a repellent to insects. It therefore kept clothes, bedding and other possessions safe from any moths and other pests.

In Beijing and the surrounding regions, where we source most of our camphor trunks, they tended to be quite plain in design, with just the heavy brass hardware and handles as decoration. In the south of China they would often be carved – being a very hard wood camphor takes carving very easily, and many pieces were made for export in the early part of the 20th century and shipped back from Hong Kong by westerners.

The chests that we have available tend to date from the beginning of the 20th century and are from the Beijing area. They are usually stripped back to the natural pale colour of the camphor wood and then resealed, although in some cases we will have them stained darker. The distinctive scent of the camphor is still present as, with the exception of the less prized ‘yellow camphor’, it does not diminish over time. The chests vary in size but tend to be around W90 x D50 x H45cm – ideal as a little coffee table in a modern home, with plenty of space inside for storage.

We have one or two of these pieces already here in our Saltaire showroom, while several others can be ordered online from the ‘antique trunks and chests‘ section of our website.

Our next shipment of Chinese antique furniture is booked to leave at the end of next week, so we have now added just about all of the pieces to be shipped onto our website. There will be a few more as we make a final selection but the container is already more than full with furniture, along with some more wonderful accessories bound for the showroom here in Saltaire.

One of the highlights among the pieces due to come over is this stunning black painted cabinet from Shanxi province. Shanxi is located in north central China and has a well earned reputation for producing some of the finest pieces of furniture during the late Ming and the Qing dynasties. It is particularly famous for its painted furniture, including large ’square cornered’ storage cabinets such as this one. It was common for pieces like this to be given by a family as part of the wedding dowry for their daughter, along with silks and other gifts that were stored inside. The style of paintings tended to differ depending on the area in Shanxi the cabinet was made, with certain cities such as Pingyao and Linfen, being well known for specific types of decoration. Common themes included landscapes, flowers or paintings of the owner’s prized possessions.

Compared to other parts of China, furniture from Shanxi is relatively common and many of the pieces available on the market today are from this region. This is partly due to the importance placed on preservation of the wood by Shanxi carpenters, who would often use fabric or clay to bind together joinery and to act as a base for the lacquer. It is also down to the fact that Shanxi is relatively inacessable and so was far less affected by the upheaval and turmoil of China’s Cultural Revolution than other regions, where antiques were routinely destroyed as being representative of the bourgeois classes.

However large cabinets like this one, with the original beautifully worked paintings still intact, are becoming more and more difficult to source so I was delighted when our main supplier in Beijing sent through photos a few weeks ago and I immediately reserved it for our container. Unusually the paintings on this particular piece are in more subtle pastel shades than normal, with the creams, greens and pinks providing a lovely contrast against the black lacquer surface. In this case the paintings are of vases of flowers and other items, including a teapot in the top left and an altar table with a scroll design – common during the Qing dynasty, at the bottom of the right hand door. The lower panel underneath the doors is painted with two herons – symbols of long life.

You can find out more about Shanxi furniture and other regional styles on our Chinese Furniture resources site at www.chinesefurniture.co.uk, or for a wealth of information about furniture from this region read Curtis Evarts’ excellent book, written in association with the Beijing dealer and collector Cola Ma – ‘Traditional Chinese Furniture from the Greater Shanxi Region’.

I was hoping to be updating this blog from Shanghai and Beijing over the coming days, with details of the new pieces we have been developing as well as sneak previews of some of the Chinese antiques that we will be shipping next month. Unfortunately like thousands of others my flight to Shanghai last Tuesday was cancelled due to volcanic ash from Iceland! So I find myself here in the showroom in Saltaire look out onto a beautiful sunny day rather than making my way through Chinese warehouses. With the next possible flight not available until early May and with our next antique conatiner lined up to leave just a week or so later, it now seems to make sense to postpone things until a little further down the line.

The good news is that the container is already just about full with pieces that I selected on my last visit, plus others chosen from our regular suppliers using the wonders of the internet and many smaller accessories that were already lined up. While the flight cancellation is frustrating it is therefore far from being a disaster. We’ve worked with the main antique restoration workshop that we use now for around five years and the quality of the pieces and the finishes they use are consistently high. This means that trips to see them are often as much about relationship building as they are about selecting individual pieces to ship, as we can be confident that whatever we order through them will be good quality and carefully restored.

The cancelled flight also means that I have  time freed up to concentrate on the dozens of other things that need my attention. Most excitingly, the new additions to our Chinese Country furniture range have now been photographed, ready to add onto our website in the next week or so. Having designed these some months ago together with our supplier in Beijing, it has been great to see the finished pieces and I hope you like them as much as I do. The deeply grained, natural elm finish really looks striking, particularly on some of the larger pieces such as our new dining table and bookshelf. Hopefully we can make room in the showroom for one or two of these pieces to coincide with their being added to the website. There are about ten new pieces in total, including bedside cabinets, drawers, blanket trunks and mirrors all adding to a range and style of furniture that is exclusive to Shimu and that I think is unlike anything else available in the UK.

As well as the new ‘Chinese Country’ pieces, we will be adding some more antiques up to the site in the next couple of weeks as we finalise the container. More details soon!

Off to China again at the end of April to visit suppliers and source our next container of antiques. It seems only weeks ago that I was last over there, but it will be good to catch up with everybody at the workshops in Shanghai and Beijing. I fly first into Shanghai for what must be getting on for my 20th visit in recent years, to check on all the latest progress with production of our Classical Chinese furniture. We’ve worked with the guys there since we started nearly seven years ago, and it’s been nice to see them grow as our business has grown. They moved the workshop to new, larger premises on the outskirts of Shanghai a couple of years ago and the facility is by far the best equipped and managed that I have seen. The majority of the workers live on site, returning to their hometowns for public holidays including three weeks around the Spring festival, and it is good to see that they are well catered for at the workshop. The sames faces are there each time I go, which is a good sign of a contented workforce in what is a very transient job market. It also means that skills are retained in producing our furniture, ensuring that we can maintain the high quality that we have achieved over the years.

We are looking to add a few new pieces and styles to our Classical Chinese range in the near future, so this will be a good chance to see the new pieces and make any final changes to the designs before we add these to the collection. We are also expanding our Contemporary Asian furniture range, with the first of the new pieces about to leave Shanghai ready to be photographed later in May.

After a few days in Shanghai it will be over to Beijing to see our other suppliers – the part of the trip that I enjoy most as I can select the pieces that we will include on our next shipment of antique Chinese furniture. In fact we already have about half a container reserved with pieces left over from last time as well as others that we’ve snapped up quickly after receiving details by email of some beautiful pieces that one of the workshops had recently received to be restored - more details to follow soon! But it’s good to be able to personally select the remainder of furniture to go on the container when I’m over there, particularly as there are usually a few specific pieces that I am looking to source for certain customers.

We often mix pieces from different suppliers to fill a container and give us a selection of styles and finishes. Some of the workshops in Beijing are still doing a very classical, thickly varnished finish, but over recent years others have moved on to different ways of presenting a piece with a less heavily restored look which I much prefer. The main workshop that we work with in particular is great at maintaining all the character of the furniture, using what has survived over the years and selecting a finish that suits the individual piece. They will often strip back a carved coffer to show the natural beauty of the wood and emphasise the craftsmanship involved in the carvings, or leave a painted cabinet almost entirely untouched rather than add layers of varnish – the pictured coffer from Shaanxi province is a good example and is part of our current collection. To me this gives a far more interesting and genuine result compared to other factories, where antiques are often so overly restored that they might as well be reproduction pieces.

As well as the furniture I’ll be on the look out for any interesting accessories to include on the container, which means visiting a couple of markets for antiques as well as reproduction bronzes, ceramics and paintings, and catching up with suppliers of the lamps and silks that we stock. All in all it should be a very busy but hopefully rewarding trip.

I will try to keep the blog up to date with any interesting finds on my visit. In the meantime, if there is a particular antique that you are looking for get in touch and I will be happy to look out for something when I’m in China!

Our second shipment in two weeks arrived on Wednesday, and we took delivery at the showroom on Friday of the many beautiful smaller accessories that we managed to squeeze onto the container along with the furniture. An almost full lorry load meant that we were swamped by boxes and packaging for several hours, but we finally managed to unpack and find a home for just about everything in the showroom – although many pieces had to be stowed away for future display. It’s lucky we have so many cabinets and chests for storage space!

Along with the birdcage lamps mentioned in a previous post, we now have further stock of pillow boxes, calligraphy brushes and brightly coloured lacquer boxes that are always popular. Along with these are some wonderful and unique old painted boxes, buckets and baskets, carved wooden budhhas, brush pots, vases and several pairs of very cute silk baby shoes. Hopefully we can get a few of these items up on the Shimu website in the next few weeks, but until then a visit to our showroom here in Saltaire is the only way to get your hands on these!