Photo: Contemporary Chinese Furniture Design
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Chinese Designers Make A Mark In Avant Garde Designs by Lindy Monteiro | Jan 26 2020 ART & DESIGN Share
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Authored by Charlotte and Peter Fiell, with Zheng Qu, the book retails at £30. Get it at www.laurenceking.com |
Contemporary Chinese Furniture Design is the first definitive book on contemporary Chinese furniture, introducing the work of leading designers and design studios, including Chen Darui, Jerry Chen, Frank Chou, Hou Zheng-Guang, Hong Wei, Ma Yansong, Neri & Hu, Shao Fan, Shang Xia, Song Tao, Studio MVW, Xiao Tianyu and Zhang Zhoujie. The recently published title explains how the new wave of Chinese furniture designers are looking back to their cultural roots and revitalising traditional forms, materials and techniques in order to produce interesting and exciting contemporary furniture that is 100 per cent Chinese. The book features over 400 exemplary works representative of the new wave of creativity in modern Chinese furniture design. Channeling the spirit of the Song and Ming dynasties, as well as other Chinese styles and themes, the designs express a 21st Century Sino-centric national romanticism.
Photo: Contemporary Chinese Furniture Design
"Chaise, Work No. 32" from the "Zan Zhi – In Praise of Rectitude" series by Jerry Chen for Chunzai, 2012 Born in Taipei, Chen inherited his love of collecting from his mother, and as a child collected antique textiles, before moving into archaeological finds as a teenager. He initially studied ballet dancing and stage design, but abandoned these to follow his real passion: collecting antiques. He says: "Collecting fuels the desire to learn, enriching life. Over and above that, collecting inspires cultivation and rumination." Inspired by the elegant lines of calligraphy, Chen's seating designs convey the fluidity and transparency of space and time, while rekindling the ancient Chinese scholarly spirit and aesthetics of Ming-style furniture. 
Photo: Contemporary Chinese Furniture Design
Studio MVW: "BlooMing ceiling light #1" by Studio MVW (self-production), 2017 Xu Ming and Virgine Moriette of Studio MVW mix ancient Chinese forms and motifs with a western sensibility in order to create furniture pieces that have an undeniably Sino-French élan. Their sculptural design-art pieces are stylistically diverse, ranging from their solid Xiangsheng patinated bronze side tables, which channel the core Chinese philosophy that the balancing of opposites achieves harmony, to stunning neo-deco boudoir pieces that feature pink Burmese jade in gravity defying constructions. This series also reveals Xu Ming and Virgine Moriette's skilful cross-cultural interpretation of forms, which playfully subvert their historic cultural associations. 
Photo: Contemporary Chinese Furniture Design
"Object # sqn1-f2 a" chair by Zhang Zhoujie (self-production), 2011 An emerging star of contemporary Chinese design, Zhang Zhoujie is at the forefront of professional practice, using revolutionary and disruptive computer algorithms to create furniture unlike anything ever seen before. His furniture is not designed by him, but by the generative computer algorithms created. For over a decade Zhang has been working on his evolving Digital Object/ Triangulation Series, which is inspired by the Taoist philosophy of spontaneity as it is by the parametricism movement that he first encountered in 2009 as a visiting researcher at London's Architectural Association. The designs of one of his origami-like chairs and tables are created in just a couple of seconds of digital processing. Then painstakingly constructed using traditional hand-welding and polishing technique.
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