Our latest container of Chinese antique furniture from Beijing sails into port this evening so all being well we will get our hands on the contents around the middle of next week, when it arrives at our warehouse. In this case almost all of the pieces included on the container are ones that I selected myself on my most recent visit to China, so it will be great to finally get hold of these in the UK.The time taken to finalise the various items of furniture and accessories to be included on the container, organise shipping and then the actual shipping time itself – often around 5 weeks or even more from Beijing, means that it will have been months since I saw these pieces in the various warehouses that I visited.

In the meantime we have photos and details of all the furniture so we have been busy editing these and putting them up on the website over the past couple of weeks. You can now already see and order all of the sixty or so antiques that are coming in, which include some beautiful painted furniture from Shanxi (one of my favourite styles of Chinese furniture and one that I blogged about last time), as well as some quite unique and now quite rare Mongolian furniture. There are also a couple of wonderful altar tables from Shaanxi province in central China. These two pieces are particularly old, with one dating from the middle of the 18th century at a conservative estimate.

Shaanxi, with its ancient capital of Xian – home of the terracotta warriors – developed a quite distinctive style of furniture and the pieces that survive and are on the market today tend to be from the early 19th century and earlier. Most of these pieces are either side tables, altar tables or coffers – used for storing valuables. What they all tend to have in common are ornate, usually quite heavy carvings on the front. Like furniture from most other parts of China these were normally finished with a lacquer. However the most striking thing about the pieces are the carvings and the rich grain of the elm wood that they are normally made out of. The restoration workshops that we work with will therefore often strip back any remaining traces of lacquer to reveal the beautiful wood beneath and so that the carvings can more easily be appreciated.

As well as the antique furniture and production pieces in our ‘Chinese Country‘ range – several made to order to meet customer requests, the container is also filled with some fantastic accessories. Some of these can already be ordered online but they also include new lighting, ceramics, art, jewellery, lacquer boxes and more that will only be available through our showroom in Saltaire – they should all be here within the next couple of weeks. So if you are not too far away or are passing this way, make sure you pay us a visit to view these in person.

My last post talked about my visit to one of the areas in Beijing where you can view and selected unrestored antique Chinese furniture, with hundreds of pieces from different regions stacked up in warehouses. There were two vast warehouses specialising in the beautiful painted furniture of Shanxi province (see Roger Schwendemann’s blog for a very good article on these pieces), and it is quite possible that the cabinet shown here passed through one of these warehouses at some time in its life, before going on to our supplier to be carefully restored and then shipped to the UK.

Most of the furniture that we ship dates from around the end of the 19th or beginning of the 20th century, as it is difficult now to source older pieces. However we do occasionally come across something that is alot older and this beautiful painted black lacquer cabinet is one such piece. At a conservative estimate this dates from the mid 18th century, but it is most likely older than that – possibly being made at the end of the Ming Dynasty around the mid 17th century.

While it can be notoriously difficult to accurately date Chinese furniture, there are often clues in the lacquer, hardware or paintings and this piece is a good example. The black lacquer here is clearly very thick, built up in several layers most likely over a fabric base to achieve the desired smooth, shiny finish. Where the lacquer is worn, the wood beneath is clearly aged – you can see particularly along the side frames and at the feet. There is also crackling visible in the lacquer – something that occurs naturally over time and, although not impossible, is very difficult to fake. The brass hardware on the doors would once have been bright but over the years has turned to the dull, blackened colour that you see here. Again a good indicator of age, this is clearly a result of oxidisation over time rather than any modern day chemicals.

Lastly the paintings in this case give a clear indication of the period that the cabinet was first made. Their original brightness has faded, muted through exposure to the elements, but in this case it is more what they depict that shows the cabinet’s age. The frames of the cabinet are decorated in gold with a scrolling dragon head design – a specific motif that was typical of furniture from the late Ming period but not used during the later Qing. Even more significantly, the characters depicted in the paintings on the front of the doors are all dressed in clothing typical of the late Ming period, rather than the later Qing. While this does not necessarily prove that the paintings were carried out in the earlier period, there is no reason why an artist during the Qing dynasty would have painted characters in Ming dress. The new dynasty, founded when the Manchus successfully expanded south into China and eventually sacked Beijing, quickly went about enforcing their regime – symbolised by the edict in 1645 that all Han Chinese should shave the front of their heads and wear their remaining hair in a ‘queue’ on pain of death. It would therefore make no sense for an artist in Shanxi to decorate a cabinet such as this with characters from the earlier dynasty if working under the Manchus.

Finding this piece on my last visit to China was a real highlight as good quality furniture from Shanxi province is becoming incresingly hard to find. It has been sympathetically restored by the highly skilled craftsmen at our antique supplier in Beijing and remains in a very original condition. For one lucky new owner it will represent not only a beautiful addition to the home but a little slice of Chinese history.

Airport again, but this time half way home. The past week or so seems to have flown by as I’ve hardly had a chance to draw breath in between getting around the various markets, suppliers and workshops out here. It has been a great trip though. We will be soon be stocked up again with plenty of smaller pieces that help to add extra interest to the showroom, including a few new items – pottery and textiles that will be sent over with our next container. As well as that I’ve been able to pick out some superb pieces of antique furniture which we will ship soon. These all need to be photographed so it will be a few weeks before they are up on the website but there are some real gems. I’ve lined up far more than we can ship, so as usual it will be a question of prioritising what goes on the container and what has to wait until next time.

I spent Tuesday and yesterday afternoon visiting four more antique suppliers here in Beijing, a couple of which I had visited before but the other two were new to me. One of these in particular had a very wide variety of stock from almost all regions of China other than the south. I picked out some lovely painted furniture from the central province of Shanxi as well as one or two more unusual pieces from Gansu and a few very attractive little boxes. The difficulty is deciding what to leave behind, particularly as certain pieces are becoming more and more difficult to find in good, original condition so there is likely to be only a limited time period when these are still available. It’s a balance between not holding too much stock in the UK but not missing out on certain finds, at least before the prices rocket as has been the case already with Tibetan and to a lesser extent Mongolian and Shanxi pieces.

This morning (or now yesterday morning) was a little different. I met up with Roger Schwendeman, an American who has been in the Chinese antique business in Beijing since the end of the 90s and has a wealth of knowledge about the subject. You can check out his very informative blog here. I went with Roger to one of the two large markets in the city that sell unrestored antiques. These are both made up of many warehouses, run by the people who go out and source antiques from the various regions of China and bring them back to Beijing. They then sell them on to the many workshops who restore them for retail or in most cases for export. Each warehouse tends to specialise in furniture from a particular region, with the people who run them being from those areas – so there are a couple that are filled with Shanxi pieces, another that specialises in walnut furniture from Gansu and so on.

Looking around these spaces it was reassuring to see that there are still large quantities of pieces available, much of which is still of good quality – two hundred year old cabinets with the original lacquer, paintings and hardware, or beautifully decorative altar tables with their carvings almost entirely intact. However, I understand that several years ago there were far more of these warehouses. For example, rather than just one or two Shanxi specialists there were about twenty. This is partly indicative of the increasing scarcity of some furniture but is also likely to be down to other factors. Demand has reduced in some parts of the world, although seems to be holding up in the UK. Also it is becoming more time consuming and expensive to source antiques from the countryside – again because they are more scarce, and this type of work is less attractive to workers in the provinces who see easier money to be made in the cities. Not only that but most of the workshops who once specialised only in antique restoration have recognised that their supply is finite and have moved towards reproduction pieces. Interestingly they are also concentrating more time on the rapidly expanding domestic market, although this means a complete change in style as the Chinese are almost exclusively interested in Western style furniture!

That’s about it for now. Once we have some good quality photos rather than the ones I took in the dimly lit warehouses I will pick out one or two of the more interesting pieces that we will be shipping but if you can’t wait until then and are after something in particular then give me a call or contact us on the web.

James

I left Shanghai in the pouring rain and arrived to clear blue skies in Beijing on Saturday. It’s been a busy couple of days, with Sunday spent at the main Beijing market picking up some smaller pieces – mostly to accessorise the showroom, and today starting to select the furniture for our next container of antiques.

The market was as busy as ever, with an incredible array of items covering everything from huge stone carvings to textiles, bronzes, jade and pearls. There are rows and rows of stalls over several acres so it is easy to spend hours browsing and trying to spot the hidden gems amongst the junk. There were a few things that I wanted to stock up on for the shop such as some nice little watercolours and calligraphy brushes, but there is always something new that catches the eye. This time I picked up some more Miao jewellery – bracelets and hair pins, and found some wonderful old suzani fabrics. These are actually from Uzbekistan and other central Asian countries rather than China – decorative fabrics usually in cotton and traditionally embroidered by young women to present to their husbands on their wedding day as part of a dowry. The ones I chose are around 40 or 50 years old and the needlework is superb. They will make beautiful throws and bedspreads and I hope to have some of these available on the web in a few weeks.

I spent today with the main supplier I source antiques from here in Beijing. Like many of the workshops in China these days, they have moved their business over the years from dealing mainly in antiques to reproduction furniture, as the number of good quality antiques available has dwindled. While they hold less stock than they used to they will still bring new items in from time to time to restore and there are always some nice pieces to choose from. The highlight this time was a wonderful old black painted armoire from Shanxi province – the type of piece that is difficult to find these days and whose value is starting to increase quite rapidly. Although restored, the cabinet is still in a very original condition, from the thick black lacquer to the hardware and paintings showing scenes from Chinese legend. The cabinet is conservatively 250 years old, most likely dating from the beginning of the Qing dynasty or even end of the Ming as the painted design is typical of that period.

We also paid a visit to a neighbouring warehouse – another dealer who has been in the antiques business for many years. Here I selected several more pieces to ship, including a number of Mongolian cabinets and trunks. Thought not yet as rare as original Tibetan pieces, Mongolian furniture is also becoming quite difficult to find and this particular dealer over the years has had one of the widest selections in Beijing. Again he has slowly been moving away from antiques towards production furniture, and now has only a small selection left. Mongolian pieces are distinctive by their paintings and especially the colours – usually flowers and animals in greens, reds and yellows. The once vivid colours fade over the years resulting in a subtle, characterful finish. As well as one or two nice little cabinets I picked up and old trunk, still with its original stand, typical of the type of furniture used in a ‘yurt’ – the large tents used by the nomadic tribes of Mongolia.

I’m out tomorrow with one of my other contacts in Beijing to visit a few more warehouses. Each one tends to have a slightly different selection in terms of the regions that their pieces come from and the type of finish they use when carrying out any restoration, so it is always good to visit a few different places. I’ll report any interesting finds in the next couple of days.

I’m writing this at the airport after a couple of busy days in Shanghai and having just about got the better of some serious jet lag. It has been a productive time so far, with a day spent touring around a few antique specialists and markets looking mainly for interesting smaller pieces for our showroom, many of which will also find their way onto the web in the next couple of months. Some of these are one off pieces – old boxes and baskets, but others are new pieces that we will be able to hold in stock and resource, including some stoneware, lamps and resin items from a supplier based in Guilin, southern China, who has a showroom in Shanghai.

As well as the smaller items I couldn’t resist a few larger pieces of antique furniture. We tend to source most antiques from a few suppliers in Beijing as I find the choice there is a little wider and prices more competitive. Shanghai also tends to have slightly more pieces from nearby Zhejiang and other southern provinces, which I personally find less attractive and less interesting than the furniture from more northern and western regions. The materials used are more commonly fir, cypress and other less expensive woods compared to the elm and walnut of furniture from Gansu and Shanxi and the paintings less interesting. Having said that, there are always some gems to be picked out. This time around I chose a few cabinets, including a wonderful double cabinet from Shanxi, unusual in that it is still in just about in an entirely original state, including the lacquer, paintings and the internal configuration. This includes shelves with front boards that hide ‘secret’ sections, as well as internal drawers. It is now quite unusual to find old Shanxi furniture like this in such excellent condition so it was impossible not to take it. I also found some very nice wall carvings – in particular one lovely carved window panel taken from a home in Fujian province. We will need to wait until these pieces are shipped to the UK before we can get some good quality photos taken so it will be some time before they are up on the web but if you would like a sneak preview contact me via the Shimu website.

Yesterday was spent with a visit to our silk wallpaper supplier to catch up with their latest developments. They are working on some new sample books showing photos of some of their recent projects along with the patterned wallpaper used so we will be able to get hold of some of these ourselves in the next few weeks. They have also been busy working on other silk products include a lovely range of silk cushion covers and bedspreads – embroidered by hand and superb quality. Again, these are pieces that we hope to be able to offer soon, both in the showroom and through our website.

After that is was over to the furniture workshop on the outskirts of Shanghai for discussions with the production team and to inspect our latest container of Classical Chinese furniture. This is due to be loaded and shipped next week so most pieces are already finished and ready to be packed, with just the final touches needed on the remaining items. As usual there are a quite a few ‘made to order’ pieces along with the standard furniture, so it was good to see these personally. Usually I only ever see photos as they are shipped and delivered straight out to our customers. This time around the ‘bespoke’ pieces include a pair of large red and gold cabinets, along with additional two door cabinets to go on top. These type of pieces were commonly used in sleeping quarters in Shanxi and other regions of China from hundreds of years ago, used to store clothes and bedding. Like our new pieces they were almost always made in pairs. The one nod to modern practicality for our pair is that they include wooden hanging rails as well as shelves, as the customer will be using them as wardrobes. The pieces are designed to sit side by side and overall are well over two metres in height – beautifully finished with gold leaf decoration, the end result is stunning.

I’ve had little time to myself as the evenings have been spent with Mr Zhang, the workshop head, and his assistant Anita. I’ve worked with these two for at least six years (longer in Mr Zhang’s case), and it is always a pleasure to catch up. We had dinner together on each of the past two nights – always enjoyable although as Mr Zhang usually orders for us all there is always some trepidation over what will arrive on the table. I find the best policy is to eat first and ask questions later and I have to say that in the vast majority of cases the food is excellent, even if it sometimes looks very different from what we in the West are used to. Last night we went to a fantastic place that I had not been to before. The decor was traditional Chinese, with the entrance hall a replica of an old house, down to the ornate beams and antique carved window panels around the outside walls. Three mynah birds were there to greet us with shrill squawks and Chinese phrases much better than my own.

I was also treated to a foot massage, now usually the case on my visits to Shanghai. I’m sure the masseuse was very gentle compared to her usual customers, but to my pathetically soft western feet there were still moments of serious pain! One part of the foot in particular caused me grief. As each area of the foot is supposed to correspond to another part of the body I asked which area this was linked to. This caused much hilarity and I never got a straight answer so I dropped the subject. I may be wrong but reading between the lines, maybe it’s just as well I’m not planning on having any more children!

I’m due into Beijing this evening and tomorrow will be spent visiting our main antique supplier, starting to put together our next shipment of antique furniture. Looking forward to seeing what is available – more to follow soon.

James

It’s been longer than I would have liked since my last visit, but I’m flying out again to China in ten days or so to meet up with suppliers and to source more beautiful antiques and accessories. First stop this time will be Shanghai to meet up with the guys at the workshop where most of our reproduction pieces are made. The timing fits in nicely this time around as we have a container of Chinese Classical Furniture due to leave Shanghai towards the end of June, so I will be able to personally check each item before it is loaded. As usual, in addition to our standard designs the shipment will include a large number of made to order pieces that we have arranged for customers over the past few weeks. Normally I don’t get to see these ‘in the flesh’ but have to make do with photos that the guys at the workshop take for me. So I’m looking forward to inspecting these – in particular a couple of large red and gold Wedding Cabinets that we have had made as bedroom furniture for a customer in London. I’ll also be catching up with the supplier we use for our silk wallpaper to look at their latest designs and ideas.

After Shanghai it will be on to Beijing to meet up with other suppliers and more specifically to look for pieces to go our next shipment of Chinese antique furniture. We use one main workshop that we have been involved with now for around six years and which also makes some of our reproduction furniture. However it is always interesting to visit a number of other suppliers as each one tends to have a slightly different focus either in terms of the type of pieces they have available or the finishes and techniques that they use in restoring antiques. Ultimately every customer has slightly different taste so it makes sense to try to source a fairly eclectic mix of pieces.

As well as the antiques, I will also be on the hunt for good quality and unusual smaller items to complement our furniture. This means visiting the various markets around Beijing where you can find everything from wonderful reproduction bronzes, such as our beautiful ‘Tang Horse‘ pictured here, to traditional ancestor paintings, artworks, ceramics, silks and much more. We plan to make far more of these smaller items available online in the next few months so more details to follow!

I’m hoping to have time to put a couple of posts up on the blog while I’m over in China with details of any unusual or interesting finds so check back soon.

James

We’ve been busy finalising our latest shipment of antique Chinese furniture to leave from Beijing and the container will be on its way in the next week or so. The ‘relic inspection’ took place yesterday so it should be a matter of days before everything is packed up ready to go. In China any old and antique pieces to be exported are required by law to be checked by a customs official before they are allowed to leave the country. A wax seal is then placed on each item to show that they have been checked and can be exported. If you’ve bought an antique from us or have ever been into the showroom and taken a look as some of the smaller accessories that we import along with our furniture, you will recognise the little wax seal from the ‘Cultural Relics Bureau’.

In recent years the Chinese government has been increasingly strict about checking all items. Antique furniture is a little easier to get through the inspection unless very old but ceramics in particular as well as items from certain parts of China (notably Tibet) are notoriously prone to being tied up in red tape. One of our suppliers in Beijing has had whole containers rejected simply because of one or two pots that were considered unsuitable for export. Thankfully we have never had any issues with items being rejected by the officials but the whole process can take a frustratingly long time.

The container this time includes some of the items that we did not have room for last time, as well as some superb pieces that we have just about finished adding onto the website. As usual there will also be a whole array of smaller accessories, some of which will go onto the website and others which will be available only through our showroom here in Saltaire.

One of my favourite pieces is this wonderful cabinet from Shanxi province in western central China. Shanxi is very well known in China for the quality of its furniture and many of the pieces that have made their way over to Europe and America in recent decades originated in the province. Because it is largely cut off from the rest of China by mountain ranges and has an abundant supply of natural resources, the furniture managed to survive much of the worst of the Cultural Revolution – whereas in other regions antiques were destroyed or even burnt to fuel back yard steel furnaces. The furniture was also well preserved, often with cloth used below the lacquer to bind the joins together.

Cabinets like this one, with an open shelf space in the upper section and doors below, are less common than the standard two door cabinets, and are referred to as display cabinets or ‘wanli ge’ in Chinese. The upper section would be used to display vases or ornaments, while inside would be stored books and documents or valuables. Like other Chinese cabinets, they were almost always made in pairs.

This particular cabinet is around a hundred years old and is in excellent condition, with just some wear in the lacquer around the base. The lacquer itself is in a rich red – produced from the cinnabar pigment that was commonly used in Shanxi and Qinghai provinces. The upper open section is framed by some wonderfully intricate carvings of flowers, beautifully preserved and still with traces of the original lacquer in green. The narrow doors in the lower section are set within outer panels – similar to Qinghai furniture, rather than being mounted on the frames of the cabinet. Along with the small, understated brassware, this gives a clean, minimal style that draws the eye to the more decorative section above. The cabinet is also a little smaller in size than most other display cabinets seen, making it easier to fit into many modern reception rooms.

The detailed carvings around the shelf make this piece quite special, and it’s a type of piece that I have only rarely seen on my visits to China. Due to arrive with us around the end of May it will certainly make a beautiful addition to someone’s home here in the UK.

Every time we ship our Chinese furniture from either Shanghai or Beijing, along with our standard pieces and antique furniture there are always several items that we have ‘made to order’ to meet specific customer requirements. This is one of the most enjoyable parts of the job, as we work with a customer to come up with a suitable design and then see the piece come into creation. In many cases the design will be based on one of our standard pieces – often with tweaks to the dimensions or finish, but sometimes we work to produce something a little different. It is very rare that the workshop is not able to meet the specifications we give them.

One of the pieces that we very often make to order is our Television Cabinet. The standard cabinet comfortably fits a 32″ TV and is a great way to hide away a not particularly attractive piece of modern technology when not in use. However, as flat screen TVs seem to grow ever larger we are frequently asked to make bigger versions of the cabinet. One such request came from a customer in York recently, who wanted to fit a 40″ TV inside. Rather than one of our plain black or natural lacquer finishes, she also preferred the beautiful gold leaf and painted finish of our ‘Shanxi Butterfly’ cabinets, but wanted the paintings to match the carefully chosen colours and decor of her sitting room. The customer was able to proivde swatches of her curtain and cushion fabrics, which we sent off to our Shanghai workshop and from these they were able to closely match the purples, pinks and browns that the customer wanted.

The result was this wonderful cabinet, finished in cream lacquer both outside and in, with the wonderful dancing butterflies surrounded on the outer frames of the cabinet with flowers. The colours worked beautifully, with the gold leaf picked out as the sunlight catches the cabinet in the day. As the size of the TV meant that our usual retractable doors would have been too big and heavy for the hinges, we instead added ‘bi-folding’ doors, which fold back on themselves when the cabinet is open – a very neat solution. The cabinet also has a pull out shelf for the TV to sit on, so that the screen can pull out flush with the doors when open.

The customer received the cabinet a few weeks ago and was delighted – in fact you can read her comments at the top of the ‘testimonials’ page of our website. She also sent us a couple of the photos shown here of the cabinet in its new home, along with a detail of the butterfly paintings.

If you would like to discuss having a similar piece made, or any other ‘made to order’ item then give me a call on 0844 4128008 or contact us through the website.

James

With the Chinese New Year holiday upon us, everything has now stopped for a few weeks at the workshops in Shanghai and Beijing. Most of the craftsmen that produce our furniture or restore our antique pieces are originally from parts of China far removed from the cities, and for most the ‘Spring Festival’ holiday is the one chance they get during the year to get home and spend a good deal of time with their families. There is a huge exodus from Beijing and Shanghai as millions make the journey back to their hometowns.

This means that things are also on hold for us for a week or two in terms of finalising designs and costings for ‘made to order’ furniture or sourcing Chinese antiques for our next container. However we have already put together a good two thirds of the antique pieces that we will ship next time, provisionally at the end of March, and there are a few that we lined up just before the holdiay that are real stand out pieces for me.

One of these is a beautiful large sideboard that originates from Gansu in western China, close to the Tibetan plateau. Gansu is well known for two distinct types of furniture. The first is similar to furniture from neighbouring Mongolia and Qinghai and originates from the eastern part of the province. Usually made from pine or fir wood, these pieces are quite rudimentary but brightly decorated with paintings, most commonly of flowers.

The second style was more prevelant in the more mountainous western part of Gansu. In this area walnut trees were abundant and were one of the most popular materials for furniture making. Being a more prized type of wood, the walnut timbers were not painted but instead were finished with a clear lacquer that showed off its beautiful, rich tone. Designs tended to be quite simple, with minimal decoration other than the hardware and in some cases some carving. One other typical feature was the unusual mini cabriole shaped feet that are almost always seen on these pieces – referred to as ‘deer shaped’. This regional style is one of my personal favourites as the material is so pleasing to the eye and to the touch, while the clean lines of the designs mean that they look perfectly at home in a modern environment.

The sideboard in this instance is a great example of the style. Around 150 years old, it has all the typical features, from the thick extended ‘slab’ top to the delicate ‘deer shaped’ feet, as well as the simple carved spandrels that taper down to the floor. It would have been used originally to store clothing, documents and probably family valuables – the drawers would once have been fitted with lock plates, and there are clearly visible circular marks at the bottom of the drawers where these were fixed in place. The outer doors either side of the two central doors were originally fixed panels, but have been converted more recently to give easier access to the space inside. Best of all is the wonderful richness and warm tones of the walnut wood – beautifully preserved and full of character.

Unlike many similar pieces that are cut down in depth to make them more practical for a modern home, the cabinet is still in its original, imposing proportions. At over two metres wide and over half a metre deep it does need a large space to house it, but it would be difficult to find a more handsome example of Gansu’s wonderful walnut furniture.

Each time we ship a container of furniture over from China, along with our standard ranges there will always be several items that we have made to order to meet specific customer requests. In most cases these are fairly simple changes to our standard pieces, such as a different finish or dimensions, or perhaps a piece based loosely around one of our painted Chinese cabinets. Occasionally we get a slightly more unusual request, and this was the case recently when we took a call from a production company based at Shepperton studios in London.

The company is involved in filming the famous Japanese story of the ‘47 Ronin‘ – one of the most celebrated tales in the history of the Samurai, in which a band of swordsmen avenge the death of their master at the beginning of the 18th century. The film stars Keanu Reeves as one of the swordsmen and is currently being filmed in the UK and on location.

For one of the more important scenes in the film, the production company required 25 folding stools for the Samurai to be seated on, and were delighted when we confirmed that we would be able to produce these for them, complete with woven seat, decorative dragons in carved relief and brassware to match similar stools from ancient Japan. As they were in China, these type of stools were used on the battlefield in Japan from hundreds of years ago – the folding design making them easy to carry around for the chieftan to sit and survey the battle.

The production team had searched for similar stools online and had found the Shimu website and our own ‘Folding Horseshoe Armchair‘ – itself a reproduction of chairs used in China during the Ming dynasty. They provided us with examples of the type of piece they were looking for and, after we produced drawings to confirm the final design and dimensions, we got the go ahead. The stools have been finished in a classic red lacquer, and are now on their way with our latest container from Shanghai, due to arrive in plenty of time for filming in March.

Look out for the release of the film later on in the year and see if you can spot the Shimu stools, and if you would like one to match Keanu’s just give us a call! You can also see a few other examples of bespoke pieces we’ve made in the past on the bespoke furniture page of our website.