Mao & Me Chinese Furniture

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Made in China
Green Pebble August/September 2009 issue

In the heart of Beijing, away from the modern shopping streets and high-rise office buildings, sprawls a world unlike any other.

Crammed with alleyways, warehouses and small factories, the Chao Yang district of China’s capital city offers a cornucopia of handmade wares; some genuine art and antiques; some created from new; and most simply the everyday household items that have been lived with, discarded, recycled and revitalized.

Here, visiting these small family-run warehouses, Louise Jones and Seema Bennett - the co-founders of Mao & Me - spent several years nurturing their growing fascination with Chinese household items by rummaging through piles of dusty discards stored in these warehouses, spying a possible treasure, and asking the warehouse owner to repair it, clean it up and polish it. The result: a remarkably attractive item of furniture or decoration.

‘The products were so good,’ says Louise Jones, recalling the hours she spent in these rooms in the midst of winter, a pot of tea between her hands for warmth. ‘And it was so inexpensive, I started buying and buying. I first I didn’t know what was good or bad, and it’s taken me a time to learn, but now I know. Once you know what to look for, you can spot the integrity of the craftsmanship straightaway.’

These trips also took her to the regular outdoor markets where she picked up paintings and silks. She speaks of one of her favourite pieces, a painting of Chinese Ancestors which the shop keeper literally unrolled onto the ground at her feet. She could see that where the canvas had lost its pigment it had been repaired, but still the colours and composition proved irresistible.

In Beijing for their husbands’ jobs, and with Seema’s business background, it wasn’t long before the women found themselves exploring the possibility of going into business together and exporting select pieces to the UK market. They were particularly impressed with the more classic, streamlined designs of the Ming dynasties, and set about trying to source small factories that could deliver quality reproductions based on their own East-meets-West fusion designs.....

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