Text | Pepper hemp fish
Edit | Pepper hemp fish
Preface
When I first graduated from college, I spent a while in a mahogany furniture company and then had to leave due to family reasons, but I always had a good relationship with my seniors at that time, and we are still in touch today.
Some time ago, it happened to be the winter solstice, and my predecessors saw that I was alone in Shenzhen, so they called me to go to his house to eat dumplings.
When I was chatting over dinner and tea, my seniors couldn't help but complain to me that when I met a customer, I had to complain, saying that the furniture sold by their company was 500,000 yuan.
I can't help but wonder a little, how did this customer come to this conclusion? What is the problem with the mahogany furniture of the predecessor company?
The furniture is engraved with bat patterns
Guangdong and Fujian are very particular about drinking tea, so many people will put a tea table at home when decorating their houses, which is generally a solid wood tea table, and a mahogany tea table will be arranged on the upper grade.
In order to make the overall decoration style of the home look harmonious and unified, people who are equipped with mahogany coffee tables often replace other furniture in the home with mahogany.
This is the case of the customer mentioned by the seniors, this customer used to have average conditions at home, and then he was lucky enough to send it, and he was ready to redecorate his home.
The customer didn't like the subtle design of the new Chinese furniture, and told the seniors how gorgeous how to come, and the seniors recommended the Qing style furniture, who knew that there was a problem.
At present, the more common mahogany furniture styles are mainly Ming style, Qing style and new Chinese style, among which Ming style is more elegant, Qing style is more complicated, and new Chinese style is more simple.
Young people will be more inclined to the new Chinese or Ming style, but some old middle-aged and elderly people will prefer the design style of Qing style furniture.
When the customer made a request, the senior didn't think much about it, so he took him to see the furniture samples made of big red sour branches and purple sandalwood.
There is no blank space on the Qing style furniture, except for the place where the cushion is placed, the wood visible to the naked eye will be carved with various patterns, most of which represent auspicious meanings.
As a salesperson, the seniors generally introduce the names and meanings of these patterns to customers.
In the past, customers at this stage would listen carefully to the explanations of their predecessors, whether they heard it or not, in short, they were saying "like this", "there is still this meaning", "it has to be our traditional aesthetics" and the like.
This time, however, the client suddenly interrupted him as he listened, and then went out with a very bad face.
The seniors didn't know which sentence was wrong, and they had the heart to ask, but they couldn't get a reply, and the call was hung up.
Within a few days, news came that someone complained that their company was a spy sent by foreigners, and the evidence was that the lines of mahogany furniture were stuffed with cultural elements from European and American countries.
The seniors and the people in the design department were confused when they heard it, of course they weren't spies, but they couldn't figure out which pattern was the stuff of European and American countries.
Until a post-95 girl in the design department took a closer look at the furniture introduced that day, and said uncertainly whether it would be the bat pattern carved on the furniture that made the customer misunderstand.
Everyone thinks it makes sense, after all, bats have always been a very important role in European and American vampire culture.
Although this conjecture is a bit outrageous, it was later confirmed, and it was really complained about for this reason.
The client, who has children at home, has always hated the matter of toxic textbooks, and is very wary of the infiltration of European and American culture into the details of our daily life.
But this time he was really wronged, after all, the cultural symbol of the bat is not only abroad, but also in China, but it is relatively unpopular, and few people know about it.
Bat patterns have existed since ancient times
There are many places in Eastern and Western cultures that have opposite meanings, for example, in their eyes, the black cat is ominous, but in China, the black cat represents luck.
Bats are also such a culturally opposed species, and Western culture considers them an evil species, and even associates them with the feared vampire legends.
However, bats have a very good meaning in Chinese culture, thanks to the pronunciation, bat has the same sound as "fu", so it has become a symbol of good fortune, and this pattern is often seen on utensils, fabrics and furniture.
As early as the Neolithic period, bats were already the "darlings" of craftsmen.
In the Hongshan culture, a jade bat sculpture was unearthed, although the carving technique is relatively rough, but it can also recognize what kind of animal it is.
There were also many bats in the era of bronze popularization, and related cultural relics were unearthed in every dynasty and generation after that.
In the literature of all dynasties, bats are often seen, some of them use the image of bats to satirize the society at that time, and some of them make up a lot of strange symbolic meanings for bats.
In addition to saying that bats represent good fortune, the appearance of bats also conjures up the meaning of "longevity".
The fact that a species represents both "blessing" and "longevity" is enough to make them popular.
To what extent was the bat pattern popular in ancient times? Down to the small people on the street, up to the emperor's house, there must be something in the house that has this pattern on it.
When the emperor of the Ming Dynasty celebrated his birthday, he would specially use many patterns to symbolize longevity, including red bat clouds, which also symbolized the blessing of the sky.
One of the most typical is the largest palace in Beijing, some decorations of Prince Gong's Mansion, which is simply a deep love for bat patterns.
It is said that in the palace of King Gong, there are a total of 10,000 bats of different shapes, distributed in various parts of the palace building.
Even many pools, sculptures, and even window lattices have been made to look like bats, which shows how much the owner loves the image of bats.
stunned to turn a mediocre palace into a feng shui "bat" place, I have to say that He Shen is really thoughtful.
Coincidentally, the famous Chen Clan Ancestral Hall in Guangzhou also has a soft spot for bats, and there is a saying called "endless Lions on Lugou Bridge, countless bats in the Chen Clan Ancestral Hall".
With such a wide geographical span but a consistent aesthetic decoration hobby, it is enough to see the importance of bat patterns in the history of Chinese home furnishings.
The traditional aesthetic is gradually lost
I also learned about the traditional significance of bats when I joined the Mahogany Furniture Company, and I had never paid attention to the species before.
Even because of the popularity of vampire culture in Europe and the United States, I once thought that bats were a bad image, and this species was indeed not good-looking, so I disliked it even more.
It can be said that except for those who deliberately study the traditional pattern imagery, few people know about the glory days of the bat pattern.
In fact, it's not just the bat pattern that has declined, but now many traditional aesthetics have been gradually lost.
The elegant design ingenuity of the ancients in furniture has become "tacky" in the eyes of young people today, who are more interested in Western-style minimalism.
It is also for this reason that the design style of mahogany furniture will have more "new Chinese" style.
The so-called new Chinese style has abandoned quite a lot of classical patterns, such as bat pattern, peony pattern, lotus pattern, etc., and will only design the style of curly grass pattern in places such as handrails.
To be honest, at this point in minimalism, it is difficult to see any traditional characteristics of Chinese culture.
But this is also the inevitable result of the market compromising with consumers, and it is also a difficult change that breaks the hearts of many designers.
epilogue
The predecessors sighed and said that it was becoming more and more difficult to do mahogany furniture now, but I didn't expect to encounter this kind of strange customer, obviously I was ignorant, but I didn't want to check the information myself, but complained directly.
But they can't help it, they can't just scold people, they can only explain in a good voice.
The senior took a sip of tea and said: "Although it is difficult to do, I still want to do it, and the traditional culture cannot really be completely lost." ”