Modern Before Its Time: A Hong Kong Gallery Embraces Ming Dynasty Furniture
On a sweltering July afternoon, the junk shops of Cat Street disgorge their treasure into the warren of lanes leading up to Po Hing Fong. The chintzy bric-a-brac comprising porcelain Mao busts, rotary phones and Chinoiserie is of uncertain value and even more suspect provenance but these ‘antiquities’ certainly lend colour to this eclectic neighbourhood where temples bump up against frou-frou cafes.
Making a final ascent up Tung Street, I enter a smart glass storefront from which a snow-white Maltese gazes. Serene quiet enfolds. This is Hon Ming Gallery which, since the 1980s, has specialised in dealing, restoring and advising on Chinese furniture from the late Ming period. Greeting a new visitor, the Maltese excitedly trots over. Bonnie Lau, the gallery’s young director, scoops the dog up. Her calm presence and unadorned elegance are at one with her surroundings. Showing me into a softly lit alcove she offers a seat at a handsome Ming table.
The table’s complement of spindly looking chairs reveal their substantial heft when I pull one out and sit. Lau flashes a smile. “How does it feel, sitting on one of those?”
In that moment, I cannot yet articulate how these 400 year old furnishings are at once conspicuous and consistent within the gallery’s modern context. Relaxing into that venerable chair, a sweeping curve of wood embraces the human form with precise proportions designed to coax the sitter into an attitude of dignified ease. The chair is comfortable without overstuffed cushioning, relying instead on firm but forgiving rattan that flexes just enough but no more. Everything is just so in its restrained perfection.
Preceded by the Mongol Yuan dynasty and followed by the Manchu Qing dynasty, the Ming dynasty was an interval of native Chinese rule that lasted from 1368 to 1644. The Ming exerted immense influence in East Asia. Characterised by a conservative and inward-looking attitude, furniture design and craft are some of the dynasty’s noted cultural achievements. For Hon Ming Gallery, it is the furniture of the Late Ming and early Qing that is most interesting. “The late Ming period was prosperous and the literati were very influential. In that period there was a clear line distinguishing vulgar and elegant. For their furniture, the literati preferred something avant garde that showcased their taste. Ming furniture is a result of the collaboration between the literati and craftsmen,” says Lau adding that, subtle beauty aside, philosophy gives Ming Furniture its character. “They came up with this understated design that carries signature cultural elements and aspects of Taoism, which espouses harmony between nature and man, and Confucianism which encourages people to be humble. This informs the balance and proportion of Ming Furniture.”
A humble understated ethos has guided Hon Ming Gallery from the start. Formerly known as Hon Ming Antique Furniture, the gallery has worked closely with museums, institutions and private collectors for decades but all this grew from a little booth where Lau’s grandfather, a master woodworker from Guangzhou, repaired furniture in the 1940s. The sifu’s son, Lau Kai Sum, joined the family business gaining a strong foundation in woodworking before seeing an opportunity in antiques. In the early 1980s - the golden age of Hong Kong’s Chinese antiquities trade - he opened a shop at 90 Hollywood Road, naming it for the style of furniture he favoured most - “Hon Ming,” it is explained, means “lots of Ming furniture.” Bonnie Lau is the third generation specialising in this trade. As director of Hon Ming Gallery, she evolved the business away from the forbidding image of an antiquities dealer and into a welcoming centre of knowledge and appreciation for Ming furniture.
Lau understands better than most how inaccessible the antiquities world can be. Growing up surrounded by old furniture, she was far from enamoured with it. “We always wanted modern sofas and furniture like our friends’ families, not the old broken furniture that my parents kept bringing back.” Starting out her career in banking, it wasn’t until attending an art fair with friends that Lau began to see her family’s business differently or even consider working in it. “Bonnie’s family deals with art too!” her friends enthused. “No, no, it’s not art, just second hand furniture.” Lau would dismiss but secretly, their comments got her thinking.
“It was quite an unplanned journey.” Says Lau. She began researching Ming Furniture. “, it was only then that I realised what Ming furniture meant in terms of its unique cultural influence.” Emboldened, she broached the subject with her father. “It was father’s day and at dinner I said ‘maybe I should do a course [in Chinese antiquities].’ He didn’t make any comment until the next day when he said ‘if you are really interested in learning more I would support you.’” With her father’s blessing, Lau undertook a course at the Sotheby’s Institute of Art in London.
Though knowledgeable, Lau is still aware of how much she has to learn from her father if she is to preserve his knowledge and nudge the family firm towards the future. The elder Lau is normally reticent around his daughter but today he is pleasantly chatty. Lau records her father’s voice to preserve information from an industry facing its sunset. She is particularly concerned about practical aspects of furniture restoration and woodworking, services which Hon Ming doesn’t advertise widely but offers as a value added feature to clients - they stress here that they only do repairs and never make furniture.
“Our sifu have been doing restoration for several decades.” Says Lau Kai Sum. “They’re already in their 60s and at retirement age. Their apprenticeships took four years and required mastering every aspect of Chinese furniture making including cutting and planing without electric tools but most crucially: joinery. Those joinery techniques were passed down through the Tang and Song dynasties and culminated in the Ming dynasty when they reached their apogee because that was a cultural golden age when people appreciated clean lines and elegance.” Soon it will be difficult to find craftsmen who are familiar with the ingenious joinery used to create fine but robust furniture without the clumsy encumbrance of nails and screws. The lines in Ming furniture may appear simple but the pieces are strong. The joinery must be outstanding to achieve this. With these demands and the need for long and low paid (or even unpaid) apprenticeships, the industry is draining young blood. “It’s too much. There's no way they could take four years out for an apprenticeship, they need to get to work making an actual living” Mr. Lau intones. “When this cohort of old masters retires, the tradition of craftsmanship may end.”
The generational theme continues as we take a closer look at decorative carving on a table. “Here we see two dragons facing each other,” says Bonnie Lau. “These dragons symbolize a father and son - the father is teaching the son to become a useful person.” The two dragons are nothing more than abstract swirls, their usually complex form reduced to essence. This spare aesthetic sets Ming furniture apart from what might stereotypically be imagined of Chinese furniture - ornate and rigid; something one might find at the home of an elder relative. “Why wasn’t Ming furniture widely appreciated until the 80s?” Mr. Lau asks. “Because by the time it came to the Qing dynasty, Chinese furniture had become very ornate - 畫蛇添足 (waak6 se4 tim1 zuk1 ‘adding legs to a snake’ - ruining something by adding superfluous elements). Sometimes this was to cover shortcomings in workmanship . This began a bad association with all Chinese furniture - surface values took priority over intrinsic quality. It wasn’t until the scholar and collector, Wang Shixiang published his seminal 明式家具研究 (Research on Ming Style Furniture Míng shì jiājù yánjiū) that interest was piqued. “When Westerners learned of Ming furniture, so pure in design, they loved it.” Thus began the rush of the 1980s.
“After the Ming, there was little appreciation within China for these pieces and so they were just used as though they were normal.” Explains Bonnie Lau, fingers tracing a cup stain left on a table as though by a hapless houseguest in need of a coaster. “We once saw a table with strange swirling stains all over it - we think someone had been butchering meat on it.” But its elements like these that she appreciates - the furniture carries stories and a spirit of its own. “After the fall of the Qing and even in the wake of the Communist Revolution, Ming furniture was inexpensive,” Mr. Lau adds. “Provided one could find it.”
Like a latter day Indiana Jones, Mr. Lau was amongst the earliest Hong Kong dealers to head north in search of Ming artefacts. “You had to know where to look. What types of places had them? Places where there used to be Ming period palaces, or prosperous commercial centres of the time.” Dealers scoured the countryside to unearth caches of furniture, often deploying detective skills to track the treasure. “If you could find a Ming official’s hometown, there might be furniture that he brought home after retiring.” Mr. Lau relied on such people, paying them with liang piao (commodity ration coupons 糧票) in the earliest days and Renminbi when the economy found its feet. Dismantling the furniture, Mr. Lau would ship it back to Hong Kong where he’d reassemble it like an intricate puzzle. “You really needed to know where to look and how to deal with it - the huanghuali furniture couldn’t be found just anywhere.” The valuable rosewood, huanghuali, was used in most Ming furniture. Prized for its translucent, shimmering surface, it mellows into a distinctive yellow-brown colour and came chiefly from Northern Vietnam.
There is little Ming furniture left in China. Most of it is in the West. These days, much of Hon Ming’s business involves sourcing furniture from Europe and America. Prices have also changed. “In the 80s, a smaller dealer might have sold a pair of hyun1 ji2 (圈椅 – horseshoe armchairs) to a distributor for as little as 100 RMB,” says Lau. His daughter’s mouth drops. He shrugs in response. “At that time nobody cared about furniture.” The Laus would have paid a few thousand RMB for the same two chairs, selling one of them for between HK$10,000 and $20,000. “Now? A single chair in good condition would cost HK$800,000 to $1 million – at a conservative estimate. A pair costs much more.” Glancing at a recent Sotheby’s sale, two chairs had indeed been valued at HK$1 and $2 million. They ended up selling for HK$6.895 million.
The cultural debt owed to the Ming cannot be calculated in kuai and mao. Prefiguring Modernism by at least four centuries, at a time roughly spanning the late Middle Ages and Renaissance in Europe, Ming furniture has influenced some notable designers. “I visited the Designmuseum Denmark,” Lau recalls. “There I saw a Ming horseshoe chair. The Danes had dismantled and studied it. From this, they created their own furniture. Now Danish furniture is world famous.” He is referring to Hans Wegner’s renowned Chinese Chair, designed in 1944. Employing the same mortise and tenon joints, it is a direct descendent of Ming furniture, which Wegner first saw in a portrait of Danish businessmen in China. “They did not copy it 100 percent, but they have adapted it into something new,” says Lau. “It’s fundamentally very close.”
Given this cultural exchange, it seems somehow fitting that the Laus should now adopt a Scandinavian minimalist aesthetic to showcase their Ming furniture. The white Maltese, who up till now has been curled up asleep in a horseshoe chair, draws in visitors of all ages. They are welcome to stay and learn about the gallery’s treasures. Hon Ming constantly organises music performances, yoga classes and tours within its serene space, making Ming furniture approachable so that it might be better appreciated and understood for many more centuries to come.