A few days ago, a friend was renovating and fell in love with a solid wood table in a furniture store. After asking about the price, he almost couldn't stand it.
A plank table of the same size only costs a few hundred yuan, but this one costs thousands.
The sales said it was traditional craftsmanship and handmade customization.
Friends came to me and asked me: Is this money worth spending?
I thought about it and told him: If you just want a table where you can eat, it's really not worth it.
But if what you care about is whether this thing can be used for decades or even passed on to the next generation, then this account must be calculated again.
What is furniture craft customization
In fact, furniture craft customization is not about choosing a ready-made item in a store and taking it home. Instead, craftsmen create something exclusive for you from start to finish based on your space conditions, personal habits, and aesthetic concepts.
It is not only making something usable, but also passing on a culture.
Nowadays, factory assembly lines can produce hundreds of tables a day. However, to make a hand-made table, it only takes several days to apply a layer of natural lacquer and wait for it to dry in the shade, and it must be repeated dozens of times. In this way, months have passed.
This kind of slow and meticulous work seems particularly precious in today's fast-paced world.
Lacquer craftsmanship: furniture that breathes
When many people see lacquer furniture for the first time, they are attracted by the warm luster.
It is not as bright as industrial paint, but the kind that shines from the inside out and feels like baby skin to the touch.
The production method of traditional lacquerware is extremely complicated. First, you need to select the carcass. There are many choices for the carcass. One of them can be a wooden carcass, and there is also a lighter, thinner carcass.
Next is the most critical painting step. The natural lacquer needs to be applied again and again. Each layer must be dried in the shade under specific temperature and humidity conditions. After drying, it must be polished to a smooth state before the next layer of paint can be applied.
After more than a dozen or dozens of processes, the paint layer can reach that thick and tough level.
Then it is painted , inlaid with mother-of-pearl or carved and filled .
Did you know that there are some workshops in China that specialize in the production of intangible cultural heritage lacquerware? The products produced by these workshops are extremely finely crafted and have been exported to countries such as Japan and South Korea for a long time, and are particularly popular.
If you think about it, there is a tabletop or a jewelry box made with such craftsmanship. If you place them at home, the deep and elegant temperament they present will be incomparable to ordinary furniture.
Wood carvings and fairy works: art on wood
Let’s talk about wood carving .
A good craftsman who gets a piece of wood will not cut it right away. Instead, he will examine it repeatedly and design a pattern based on the texture, shape, and even natural knots of the wood.
This is called "applying talents according to their aptitude".
When carving, there are requirements for craftsmen, that is, their hands and feet must be steady, and at the same time, they must have patterns in their hearts, so that they can finally carve flowers, birds, and characters with a vivid and realistic feeling.
Used on beds, chair backs, and cabinet doors, the artistic value of the entire piece of furniture suddenly increases.
The biggest feature of Xianjia furniture is its emphasis on coordinated proportions and elegant shapes .
It also uses mortise and tenon joints. The whole piece of furniture does not need a single nail, but it is very strong.
Although wood carvings are also used for decoration, the carvings are not full of flowers, but focus on maintaining harmony with the overall shape.
This kind of aesthetic is very consistent with the "low-key and rich in connotation" pursued by contemporary people. Therefore, the items made by Xianzuo are not only valuable for collection, but also extremely practical.
Customization process: your ideas, the craftsmanship of the craftsmen
Most people think that customization is just a matter of telling the craftsman "make me a cabinet". In fact, it is not that easy. There is a huge gap.
The first step in a reliable customization process is to sit down and chat.
The designer or craftsman will ask very detailed questions: Where to put this cabinet?
What is the decoration style of your home?
How do you usually store it?
What's the approximate budget?
Once we understand these, we will make a sketch and confirm it with you again and again.
The next step is to choose the material. Should I use black walnut or cherry wood?
Should the paint be red or black?
Do you want mother-of-pearl embedded in it?
You can see and touch these materials with your own hands.
After deciding on the plan, we started to draw detailed construction drawings, and even made a scaled-down sample in advance to check the effect.
From then on, the production process became slower and slower, with carpenters carving out mortises and holes, carvers carving part by part, and painters painting layer by layer.
After everything is done, strict inspection is required to ensure that the structure is firm, the surface is smooth, and the dimensions are correct.
Following this set of procedures, the shortest time is one or two months, and the longer time can be up to half a year. However, every detail of the items you get can tell you that the wait is valuable.
Why more and more people choose customization
After all, making the choice to customize furniture processing is actually choosing a path that is deeply related to the object.
It is not cold consumption, but you participate in a creative process.
You watch with your own eyes a piece of wood and a coat of paint slowly become an object in your home.
This kind of experience is completely unavailable when you go to the mall to swipe your card.
The biggest advantage of custom furniture is that it is unique .
It perfectly fits your space and aesthetics, and won't conflict with other people's homes.
Moreover, because the materials used are solid and the structure is carefully considered, a piece of high-quality custom furniture can be used for decades or even hundreds of years without any problems.
More importantly, by spending this money, you are actually supporting those ancient skills that are about to be lost, so that intangible cultural heritage can survive in our daily lives, rather than just existing in glass display cases in museums.
The fusion of traditional craftsmanship and modern design
Don't think that those who engage in traditional crafts are just old antiques.
Nowadays, a group of very powerful craftsmen and many designers are embarking on a particularly interesting thing, which is to combine traditional craftsmanship with modern design.
As you can imagine, there is a table with minimalist lines and a very unique Nordic style. However, when you turn it over and look at it, you will find that it uses a very authentic mortise and tenon structure, and the tabletop has been treated with traditional lacquer.
To put it another way, there is such a storage cabinet, which presents an extremely modern style. However, the door panel is engraved with an abstract traditional moiré pattern.
Such a fusion brings new life to old craftsmanship, and adds some cultural depth to our modern home space, making it no longer a cookie-cutter model room.
The field of customized furniture craftsmanship is quite dark, but the stuff is really good.
It is rooted in profound traditional crafts such as lacquerware, wood carving, and fairy work. With the help of a rigorous and humane process, the object finally presented in your hands is not just a piece of furniture, but a work of art that can accompany you for a long time.
In this era where everything is pursued quickly and everything tends to be the same, there is an attitude that is willing to invest time and thought for a chair or a table. This in itself is a reflection of the quality of life.
Comments NOTHING