The specialists guide to Chinese antiques. » Furniture Design & Construction

How to find 3d models of Chinese furniture.

Roger — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 17:52:56 +0000

Here’s a somewhat arcane post, yet one that’s incredibly useful for anyone who is either an interior designer, furniture designer or even just someone redecorating their home with one of the many 3d programs like Google sketchup. Which brings me to the topic of this post: where to find 3d models of Chinese furniture

So, here are a few suggested sites:

Free sites:

http://www.3dmodelfree.com/3dmodel/list425-1.htm

http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/

Paid Sites:

http://www.the123d.com/furniture_collections/asian_furniture_kit.html

http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/330344

http://www.the3dstudio.com/product_search.aspx?id_category_0=0&search=Chinese+furniture

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Excellent diagrams on chinese joinery and chinese furniture construction.

Roger — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 11:30:55 +0000

This diagram from an article on the Woodworkers Institute website
shows how traditional Chinese joinery works

There is a great article on the Woodworkers Institute website which I stumbled upon quite randomly. I was actually researching some information on construction techniques for making dining room extension tables, when “lo and behold” I came across this two part article entitled Poetry in Wood.

“One of the reasons why joints were so complex in China, Japan and Korea was the climate. There are huge changes of temperature and humidity throughout the whole of central and south-east Asia, and many European colonists discovered the furniture they took with them from Europe fell to pieces because the animal glue softened in the high humidity and heat. The woodworkers of those countries found that it was necessary to make interlocking joints which had mechanical strength rather than rely on glued joints. I recall the world-record price 18th-century mirror that I worked on at Sotheby’s, pictured left, which had tiny bamboo dowels joining the 6mm-thick backboards rather than the European equivalent which would be a rubbed joint.

This is not to say that oriental furniture was not glued; it just didn’t rely so heavily upon glue. There is a similarity with 18th-century Continental chairs which tended to be pegged and glued as opposed to British ones which were only glued. One could perhaps argue that Continental colonial furniture stood up to high humidity better than British furniture! One of the roles of the furniture restorer in China was to replace and tighten the dovetail wedges used when the joints in furniture had become loose. One needs to remember that the whole assemblage of a piece of Chinese furniture depends upon the interlocking joints for stability. The top is not glued up, followed by the legs being glued on etc. The frame holds the top boards, the legs then anchor the frame, and the dovetail wedges anchor the whole lot together.”

The article is not bad, though the best part is the excellent diagrams illustrating some of the standard Chinese joinery techniques used in Chinese furniture making.

The full article is here: “Poetry in Wood” on the Woodworkers Institute website .

Dutch designer Maarten Baas in Shanghai: Interesting twists on Chinese traditional furniture designs

Roger — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 07:27:22 +0000

I stumbled upon this rather amusing post on designaddict.com which talks about Maarten Baas’s, recent Jully 2008 exhibition at Contrasts gallery in Shanghai.

While participating in Contrasts’ residency program, which brings Western artists to China to study local artistic and cultural practices, Baas became fascinated with traditional Chinese woodcarving; this exhibition is dominated by the results of this interest. His work pushes the boundaries of this time-honored Chinese craft, while also revealing the designer’s playful imagination.

Needless to say, these are some very interesting interpretations on Chinese furniture. The plastic garden chair in wood is just brilliant.

Personally, I like his smoke series in which wooden furniture has been burned with the remaining charcoal’ed pieces then preserved with a coating of clear epoxy.

From design to finished product – manufacturing your home decor product in asia

Roger — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 14:12:31 +0000

If you are designer or retailer of lighting, accessories or other home decor items and have designs you are considering producing over in this part of the world, there is a worthwhile post on our other furniture industry blog called “Design Phase: The initial steps to manufacturing your home decor products in Asia.”

Trend Guide: Rustic furniture made from reclaimed elm and other salvaged woods

Roger — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 15:48:21 +0000

I was in the warehouse the other day looking over some pieces when I was reminded how much reclaimed, recycled and/or renewable materials are definitely a growing trend. A quick Google turns up a range of articles from Reclaimed furniture: Give trees a chance to buzz on various designer blogs. Even Furniture Industry trade publications are recognizing this trend which really started to take off last year. Furniture Today wrote an article entitled “Several sources introduce lines with reclaimed wood.” Another from FurnitureStyle Magazine is called “Las Vegas Furniture Market: Beyond Distressed.”

Reclaimed & salvaged materials are environmentally friendly in that there are no new trees cut down to make the piece. Sources of wood may be old railroad ties, beams from old houses that have been demolished or even old doors. Old elm tends to be a favorite as Elm in fairly common in China. Pine is also an option as well. Other woods are also used like cypress, walnut or beech though these woods are much less common and not available in large quantities.

Since the material has been aged it tends to be more stable then new wood (which must otherwise be kiln dried and chemically treated before it can be made to be stable). In essence, pieces created from salvaged materials are antique in a very unusual way – as the materials themselves have their own story, rather then the finished piece. Finishes are less of an issue to as rather then spend time carefully creating the right distressed finish, the focus is on the already distressed natural appearance of the wood. Construction is typically using the traditional methods of tongue/groove and Chinese joinery.Reclaimed wood furniture tends to fall within either one of following three classifications:

Antique / Vintage: Often these are antique farm items which have simply been given a clean up. In other cases they have been stripped down and their original finish removed. Often traces of the original finish & color remain giving each piece its own unique “hue.”
Salvaged & Rebuilt: Old doors converted into tables tops with bases added are a good example of this. The prime element here is that a good portion of the piece is in fact antique and can be distinguished as so.
New designs from old materials: These are basically new pieces built with primarily reclaimed materials and its for this reason that the line between salvaged and new can become a bit blurry. The dining table below from ACF China Co as well as the “Haider Natural” Dining Furniture from Horchow Collection & Four Hands are good example of this. The design on the Horchow table has clearly been updated for the western buyer as the bottom stretcher would not an original feature on a Chinese type of table.

So, where is it reclaimed wood furniture being sold on the web? What are the popular looks?

Here are a few nicer examples:

“Haider Natural” Dining Furniture from Horchow Collection & Four Hands

Reclaimed Elm Table from Neiman Marcus.

Blue Wash Console Table from Wisteria

Reclaimed Elm Doorwood Coffee Table

From the The Olde Good Things Webstore. Looks so similar I wonder if it originally came from us?!

RECLAIMED WOOD FURNITURE from GreenTea Designs

Other nice pieces of reclaimed wood furniture out there?

Share them with us! Send them in or post the links here…

Comparing apples to oranges – more on determining quality in Chinese antique furniture

Roger — Mon, 12 May 2008 10:02:34 +0000

Photos of these two cabinets have been floating around on our file server for quite a while and I have been meaning to put them up here as another excellent example of differences in quality between Chinese antique workshops and restoration as well as in Chinese Country Antique Furniture in general. These are both essentially the same piece but restored in a different manner by two different factories. They are both restored antiques, both a once fairly common Mongolian style antique cabinets and even the dimensions are approximately the same. Piece A (bright red one) comes from a smaller workshop owned/operated by George, a gentleman who has worked with Chinese antiques for more then 20 years. He services mostly foreign customers and says he offers “good quality.” The other piece (Deep burgundy red) was purchased from Raymond, a larger volume based, Beijing wholesaler who claims to offer “good quality product.” Lets examine the differences to see which factory really does offer “quality” and which one is simply inexpensive.

Its the details which count

The first place the differences are evident is in the overall attention to detail. George’s cabinet has been carefully restored with extra attention paid to small details. However, Raymond’s cabinet has been sloppily restored. Area’s where the lacquer has been rubbed off have not been touched up and instead, have been given a quick coat of wax instead – thus saving costs on the lacquering. Simple (IE inexpensive) fittings have been fitted to the door, instead of the large, more functional (IE more expensive) hardware seen on George’s cabinet. Even the painting on the doors of the cabinet alludes to “cheap” – its style clearly from the 1970/1980’s and thus the un-restored cabinet itself probably was much cheaper at the time of purchase.

The original un-restored cabinet would have had a round circular style fitting enabling the owner to lock the doors and drawers together in one action. Impressions of the original hardware can still be seen one both cabinets. Possibly removed during the 1970’s during China’s great leap forward the un-restored cabinet may have already been missing this hardware. But on George’s cabinet, the time has been taken to touch up this area so it looks relatively crisp and clean. On Raymond’s cabinet, this element has been skipped over completely.

Then there is the sides of the cabinet. Often embellishments become damaged, fallen off and then lost over time in China’s harsh peasant countryside. Depending on who restores the piece these embellishments may be added back on or sometimes skipped all together. I am guessing the embellishments on George’s cabinet was either retained or carefully recreated true to the original form. On Raymond’s cabinet, a down and dirty board has been added to the side with minimal carving detail (again – cheaper) and an even sloppier painting. Unfortunately we didn’t take a photo of the insides of the cabinet, but if I remember correctly, the shelf inside George’s cabinet was made using a relatively thick board. Raymond’s? A flimsy peice of wood which looked as if it would break before supporting any amount of weight.

So which claim is correct? George or Raymond? On a scale of 1 to 10, I would put George at a quality level of at least 6. Raymond’s cabinet is what Chinese suppliers love to call “rustic,” however, I have seen good quality rustic furniture before and I think “crap” is probably a much better word to describe this piece. I would rate it at a 3 or 4 at most. Interestingly George’s piece a was not much more expensive then the other one – maybe ten to 15 percent. Which piece would you (or your customers) rather have in their collection?

For more on this topic see our previous posts on this topic:

Low Cost vs. Low Quality? You get what you pay for

Hand carved Vs. CNC woodworking

Frederic — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 02:48:59 +0000

Last week we went to an exhibition of new classic Chinese furniture. There were not only factories of furniture, but also those selling frightening robot-like CNC machines… It made me wonder if hand labor is even in threat of becoming abundant even here, even in this workmanship, even in art …

There is no doubt, those CNC (computerized numerical control) are pretty impressive. It seems it can produce almost any shape at a preciseness that can not be achieved by the human hand. Here is my first point of skepticism. What is woodcarving about? About the value of the labor, the skill of hand carving, or only about how fine the result is? There is a certain kind of coldness to a perfect picture, a computer made drawing. It is an art form, just like painting. Why don’t we hang computer-made print-outs on our wall instead of gouache paintings? This point proves that hand carvings will never be completely replaced.

Now a more practical remark is that : computers do not make designs, artists/craftsmen do. Knowing that carving has a lot of cultural identity in it, every region has its style (even a craftsmen family) and carries a signature, is unique. Those styles have been passed on for generations. Now who is going to make the CAD (Computer Aided Design) drawings, the blueprints for what the CNC makes? Also making such CAD is very labor intensive. (Those who are good at making them have a very technological background.) It must take maybe even longer to design a carving on a computer then having a craftsmen actually sculpting his piece of wood. Once a computer design is made it can be reproduced a hundred thousand times … that is true … Then we are moving towards mass productions, towards “IKEA-carvings”.

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Nevertheless we are happy with the development of the CNC. It can do amazing things. And in fact does increase the value, the appreciation of the carving made by artisan craftsmen. On the long term, hand made carving will become a luxury, expensive art. As for the antiques, the same counts, people will realize the amount of work put into certain pieces. It took us more than a thousand years to build a machine that can do almost the same. . It would be interesting to know the opinion of other people. So I hope to read a lot of comments on this post !

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On the internet I have found some articles about this matter : An inexpensive computerised numerical control (CNC) machine has helped start a new production woodworking business. The company produces complicated architectural ornamentation that was up till then mostly made by skilled craftsmen working with power tools. There is a substantial market niche for producing decorative woodcarvings faster, cheaper and at higher levels of accuracy. Low-cost CNC machines can accurately duplicate a computer aided design program in much less time than someone working by hand. Although clearly a skilled job, making complicated pieces such as carved mouldings and friezes is a very slow process by hand. The first piece is typically assigned to a very experienced and highly paid craftsman, who cuts it out with hand and power tools, then less experienced workers typically duplicate the piece using a tracer. One problem with this approach is that even the most skilled woodworker has difficulty accurately producing three-dimensional contours. The result is a piece that requires extensive finishing by hand, to chisel and sand the piece the way a customer wants it finished. The beauty of a CNC machine is that every detail of the piece can be defined to absolute perfection in the CAD/CAM software and allowing time for the operator to do something else while the machine produces the part. While the CNC machine isn’t perfect, the accuracy of the machines is far beyond what can be achieved by hand. However, every piece made will be just as good as the first one such that each piece coming off will need little hand finishing. While programming is a labour-intensive process similar to cutting out the first piece by hand, … Read the full article here : “CNC machines bring down carving costs”

A video can be seen on : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buOaF6EwEvs

Wood Finishing Articles & Information

Roger — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 07:37:12 +0000

Here is some great collection of articles I found on wood finish supply.com’s website about lacquers & wood finishing. Its quite technical and really intended for woodworkers and the like but if thats you, then this is a good resource.

Here is a sample of some of the articals:

The Atanomy of A Wood Finish
These 3 basic finish steps apply to all finishes from the most basic wax or oil finish
to high-tec coatings and even painting the exterior of a house or a room wall.
COLOR THEORY for the Woodworker & Furniture Finisher
Mixing Stains or Dyes & Color Computer Instructions.
Glossary of Finishing Terms
Woodfinishing Lingo

Stripping Wood Furniture
Guidelines for stripping wood furniture and other fine wood surfaces.
Lacquer Finishing Check List
Guidelines for spray finishing with Nitrocellulose Lacquer.
Lacquer Retarder & Flash Control
Control of Lacquer Moisture Blushing, or Overspray, and Orange-Peel problems.
LACQUER FINISHING PROBLEMS self help TROUBLE SHOOTING
Common nitrocellulose lacquer finishing problems defined; with causes & remedies.
Finishing Schedule for KITCHEN CABINETS
Spray Schedule for Durability with Nitrocellulose Lacquer
WAX THE PERFECT PROTECTION FOR FURNITURE?
Text from from Wood Magazine article on the proper maintenance of furniture.
” HOT STUFF ” Instant Glues & Solving Clogged Spouts
How to get the most from Cyanoacrylate ” Hot Stuff “. Do’s & Dont’s — How To Use.
Typical uses for Cyanoacrylate Instant Glues
ANILINE DYE
ANILINE DYE Information and Application Guidelines.
LIMING, a Limed Wood Finish also known as Pickled or “Whitewash”
This is a traditional wax finish for decorative furniture and wood surfaces
SHELLAC FLAKE, Mixing and Application Information
A guide to FRENCH POLISHING with Shellac -
ROTTENSTONE & PUMICE for Finish Rubbing Techniques for traditional rubbing of finishes to satin or high-gloss sheens.

The full text of the articles are here on their site: http://www.mcn.org/a/lib/wfs/articles.html

Buying unrestored: Custom antique restorations means usability

Roger — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 06:16:50 +0000

One of the best things about controlling your own restorations is the ability to decide what the final result will look like. This end result can sometimes be as important as the original because the “customer’s customer” is going to be thinking about where and how the piece will fit into their home. Often a “buy or not buy” decision will be made based on small details. Because ethnic furnishings is a industry like any other, as buyers one must think also about the end consumer and factor their needs into any buying decisions.

For some pieces its best to restore it as closely as possible to the original. Many consider it blasphemy to significantly modify an antique piece and for Chinese classical antiques I would agree. However for more common Chinese country antiques, modifications during restoration may be the best choice.

This wonderful sideboard was a great find, if a bit unusual and clunky at first. The left and right portions of the sideboard are completely open – no back, no sides, no bottom. The carved panels along the top were completely open as well. Here are some of the changes we made to make the piece a bit more “home friendly.”

Add bottom floor board to the left & right open sections.
Add a back panel and two side panels to the left & right open sections.
Install shelves, rather then leaving these huge open (and unusable) spaces.
Modify carvings in top section, turning them into working drawers.
Stain new panels to match original colors.
Replace missing handles & fittings.

In the final (bottom) set of photos you can see the end result – a beautiful antique sideboard which is both usable in the home and visually attractive.

The problem of “Chaobuduo” (and how it effects reproduction furnitures)

Frederic — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 10:57:31 +0000

Chinese workers love to use the phrase ¨cha bu duo¨ (pronounced “Cha Boo Daul) which directly translates to ¨not very far off (meaning approximately or roughly)¨ Unfortunately, in almost all case it usually works out to be not even close, in otherwords, ”cha tai duo” (meaning way too far off). Workers see no need for exact matches and approximations are always seen as “close enough.”

In fact, at times it almost seems like Chinese workers pride themselves on their ability to do things as ”cha ba duo” as humanly possible – as if there is some secret, unspoken competition to see just how far you can go while still getting away with it. Will they accept 80% correct? 70%? What about close but not exact?

Some real world effects of “Chaobuduo” on our industry:

The stool, bench or chair, which does will not balance evenly on the floor (probably when you were pointing this out at the factory, you were told “don’t worry, its not the chairs feet but the rough floor of the factory which is uneven.)

You asked for ten and they left three behind. (chaobuduo).
On that custom-made cabinet, everything was done right according to the written specifications with the exception of the specific “type of finish” you requested.
It was “mandarin orange-yellow” instead of “lemon-yellow.”
The outside of the cabinet was perfect – the insides of the cabinet were left unstained.

Preventing Chao Bu Duo

One can see how this clearly presents real challenges when building products to spec. Some suggestions on avoiding (or if you are lucky outright preventing) the “Cha Bu Duo” problem:

Be very clear in what your expectations are (and the desired result). Assuming that the Chinese worker making your lamp will know better then to not use the cheapest (and most dangerous) type of wiring is a receipe for disaster.
Leave no details undiscussed. This means colors, fittings, wiring, materials, edges, insides, outsides, undersides, oversides, you name it – if you don’t discuss it and give instructions beforehand, then you are probably in for a surprise.
Don’t fall for the “well some customers prefer it to be this way” trick. And yes, this IS a trick. Maybe it is true that somewhere these is a customer who does not mind that half the cabinet is unstained or the fittings missing or any other excuse. If YOU didn’t specifically ask for it to be that way, then its not according to specifications.
Be willing to pay a little extra. Maybe this goes countrary to what works back home, but in China, paying rock bottom prices will also get you rock bottom quality and even more so importantly, rock bottom attention to the important details. Unless you are Walmart, there is no high quality at rock bottom prices in China. In fact, Walmart only gets “reasonable quality at rock bottom prices.” The lower the price the more you encourage them to “just knock it out and get on with the next one.”