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Wondrous wooden wares
By Xu Wenwen |
March 23, 2011, Wednesday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
A collaboration between a creative interior designer and a skilled carpenter is producing artistic results. Xu Wenwen meets the duo responsible for the range of fancy furniture.
Leaning on his large annular bench in a natural color, designer Sun Yun proudly says: "it is the bench that was sat on the most during the German Frankfurt Fair 2010."
Sun is an interior designer based at LOFT49 in north Hangzhou, and the bench named Tuan Qi (which literally means solidarity and conjunction) No. 2 is his most satisfying work in his Tuan Qi series.
Last year, he took some of his woodwork pieces to the German Frankfurt Fair and the Tuan Qi series which includes annular benches, seats and tables made from logs received a warm welcome.
"The series was inspired by the word guanxi," explains the artist. Guanxi is a Chinese term meaning the basic dynamic in personalized networks of influence.
"Don't you think the world is connected by guanxi? And the guanxi among seats presents the guanxi among people," he says. No wonder "seats" feature in the majority of his works.
Sun shows his odd-looking seats - such as the "Couple Chair" comprised of two chairs sharing one seat pan, "Group Chairs" consisting of 12 chairs joined by the seat pan, and "Group Stools" that are bone-shaped stools connected at the joints.
"People are separated and also are connected," the free-spirited artist explains. "Sometimes you want to move, but other people or their 'seats' do not allow you."
Though thoughtful, these linked or coupled chairs are not very functional. So Sun designs practical furniture as well.
However, to figure out exactly what function his works perform can take visitors some time. For example, his human-shaped pole is a clothes hanger, the honeycomb-like structure is a storage shelf, and the wooden plate with several short sticks standing on it is a magazine rack.
Many visitors to his workshop offer him good prices to buy his work, but Sun tends to decline, because no matter if his works are functional or not, he views them as artworks rather than goods, "which can be appreciated in public spaces, or given to friends, more than be sold to strangers."
Beside the artistic value, the other reason that Sun is reluctant to sell is that every singe piece is distinctive, because instead of being produced by machines they are handmade.
"Modern people are too casual with wood, but I am respectful to the wood that nature grants us, and I want my carpenters to be respectful to wood too."
Cheng Jianfa is the very carpenter who realizes Sun's creative visions, and one of the few local carpenters capable of producing wooden wares purely by hand.
One year ago, 50-year-old Cheng who has been a carpenter all his life, had never thought that one day he would make odd artistic wood works until he met Sun and later began cooperating with him. Now he produces creative works everyday, and is becoming increasingly skillful in his work.
It was also Sun's fortune to meet Cheng - as he had eventually found a carpenter able to turn his drawings into real objects.
"Sun just designs, he doesn't know how complicated it is to produce. Not every carpenter can meet his requirements," says Cheng.
"The wood works are not allowed to be painted, so the gloss totally derives from the polish, and sanding is done by hand, which takes time and needs patience," he says. "In addition, the demand for accuracy in handicrafts is so high that a tiny error may lead to the failure of the entire piece.
"For example, Sun showed me the drawing for the Tuan Qi No. 1, in which solid wood was made into a large glossy doughnut-shaped table, but actually he had no idea how hard it was to shave the ironwood with a plane to make it round. Some requirements and details, as I saw, were too demanding, but he insisted. Finally, we worked and reworked, and spent over one month to make it."
Machines, like an air gun, can speed up the production, but result in indistinctiveness and instability of works, while traditional tools endow works with skilled techniques and artistic value, according to the carpenter.
"With a simple plane, I can polish the wood and turn it into the exact shape the designer demands, plus every piece is distinctive," he adds. "Though somehow time-consuming, the collections of work are refined."
Leaning on his large annular bench in a natural color, designer Sun Yun proudly says: "it is the bench that was sat on the most during the German Frankfurt Fair 2010."
Sun is an interior designer based at LOFT49 in north Hangzhou, and the bench named Tuan Qi (which literally means solidarity and conjunction) No. 2 is his most satisfying work in his Tuan Qi series.
Last year, he took some of his woodwork pieces to the German Frankfurt Fair and the Tuan Qi series which includes annular benches, seats and tables made from logs received a warm welcome.
"The series was inspired by the word guanxi," explains the artist. Guanxi is a Chinese term meaning the basic dynamic in personalized networks of influence.
"Don't you think the world is connected by guanxi? And the guanxi among seats presents the guanxi among people," he says. No wonder "seats" feature in the majority of his works.
Sun shows his odd-looking seats - such as the "Couple Chair" comprised of two chairs sharing one seat pan, "Group Chairs" consisting of 12 chairs joined by the seat pan, and "Group Stools" that are bone-shaped stools connected at the joints.
"People are separated and also are connected," the free-spirited artist explains. "Sometimes you want to move, but other people or their 'seats' do not allow you."
Though thoughtful, these linked or coupled chairs are not very functional. So Sun designs practical furniture as well.
However, to figure out exactly what function his works perform can take visitors some time. For example, his human-shaped pole is a clothes hanger, the honeycomb-like structure is a storage shelf, and the wooden plate with several short sticks standing on it is a magazine rack.
Many visitors to his workshop offer him good prices to buy his work, but Sun tends to decline, because no matter if his works are functional or not, he views them as artworks rather than goods, "which can be appreciated in public spaces, or given to friends, more than be sold to strangers."
Beside the artistic value, the other reason that Sun is reluctant to sell is that every singe piece is distinctive, because instead of being produced by machines they are handmade.
"Modern people are too casual with wood, but I am respectful to the wood that nature grants us, and I want my carpenters to be respectful to wood too."
Cheng Jianfa is the very carpenter who realizes Sun's creative visions, and one of the few local carpenters capable of producing wooden wares purely by hand.
One year ago, 50-year-old Cheng who has been a carpenter all his life, had never thought that one day he would make odd artistic wood works until he met Sun and later began cooperating with him. Now he produces creative works everyday, and is becoming increasingly skillful in his work.
It was also Sun's fortune to meet Cheng - as he had eventually found a carpenter able to turn his drawings into real objects.
"Sun just designs, he doesn't know how complicated it is to produce. Not every carpenter can meet his requirements," says Cheng.
"The wood works are not allowed to be painted, so the gloss totally derives from the polish, and sanding is done by hand, which takes time and needs patience," he says. "In addition, the demand for accuracy in handicrafts is so high that a tiny error may lead to the failure of the entire piece.
"For example, Sun showed me the drawing for the Tuan Qi No. 1, in which solid wood was made into a large glossy doughnut-shaped table, but actually he had no idea how hard it was to shave the ironwood with a plane to make it round. Some requirements and details, as I saw, were too demanding, but he insisted. Finally, we worked and reworked, and spent over one month to make it."
Machines, like an air gun, can speed up the production, but result in indistinctiveness and instability of works, while traditional tools endow works with skilled techniques and artistic value, according to the carpenter.
"With a simple plane, I can polish the wood and turn it into the exact shape the designer demands, plus every piece is distinctive," he adds. "Though somehow time-consuming, the collections of work are refined."
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