July 31st, 2013

From “Made in China” to “Designed in China”

It is only early days, but Chinese designers are building a presence at the Milan Furniture Fair.

Stellar Works is a Chinese-Japanese-French outfit producing upscale furniture for the hospitality industry from factories in France and China. Japanese-born CEO and a Shanghai resident for 14 years, Yuichiro Hori, claimed that few Chinese designers are interested in global expansion. One of Stellar’s latest ranges is a mix of French and Danish design with Chinese accents.

Hong Kong-based British designer, Michael Young, took advantage of idle Chinese production lines in 2008 to engineer extruded, folded and stamped aluminium lights for homewares company, EOQ.

The reason for this was that the precision processes needed to make these lights were not available in Europe, said EOQ’s Matt Pepper.

Other Asian designers were also present at the Milan Furniture Fair. Tokyo-based Nendo featured a novel collaboration with founder, Oki Sato and Venice’s Luca Nichetto. The pair based their designs on Japanese tanka poetry, where one person writes three lines and passes them to a second person to supply the final two lines.

The result was a playful homewares range, which featured such items as a cork stool with a retractable handle inspired by a pot-lid.

Source:

http://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/interiors-living/article/1216136/asias-fusion-furniture-show-milan