The history of wenge sofas

Wenge furniture has a small proportion in Ming and Qing dynasty furniture, but its personality is very prominent. It has a very different style, neither as obvious as the literati tendency of Huanghuali furniture, nor as deep and graceful as rosewood furniture. Wenge furniture hovers between literati and merchants, catering to both the elegant and the vulgar, and adapting to the needs of all levels of society.

In terms of furniture design, the only thing that puts the wood texture factor in the first place is wenge. The ancients have made it clear that they used wenge wood to make furniture, pursuing the expression of texture, rather than showing the carving skills of craftsmen, so they took no carving or as little carving as the starting point of the design, and these initial motives were the roots of wenge wood that had been popular for hundreds of years, and the reputation of wenge wood and the makers of furniture in the Ming Dynasty obviously had a causal relationship, and this cause and effect still came from the Ming Dynasty literati's natural outlook on life.

The display of non-artificial factors that the literati of the Ming Dynasty attached importance to was the shining point of ancient Chinese furniture design theory. We are amazed that the ancients had such an advanced aesthetic taste, quietly integrating the concept of non-artificial into the furniture closely related to human life, and emphasizing the survival philosophy of co-prosperity between man and nature, which is indeed superior. It is a pity that this almost hypocritical behavior of the literati of the Ming Dynasty was not understood by most people, the secular gradually prevailed, and wenge wood became a capital to show off, and few people knew the good intentions of the earliest users of wenge, and the works that deviated from the original intention of the literati of the Ming Dynasty came out one by one with the needs of the society, and were passed down from generation to generation.

In the middle of the Qing Dynasty, wenge wood furniture underwent significant changes. Influenced by other fine materials of the same period, wenge had to change its original intention, abandoning half of the principle of expressing natural textures. During this period, Huanghuali furniture and rosewood furniture were extremely ingenious in workmanship, and they expressed luxury with luxury.

Wenge finally did not endure the loneliness, and began to pay attention to both carving and texture. However, we can see that wenge wood furniture is significantly less carved than rosewood furniture, and the design principles in its essence are still quietly playing a role, so that wenge wood furniture will not be too contrary.

Collect wenge furniture, understand the process of its development, and analyze its internal causes. If we put the simple topic of furniture research in the historical and humanistic environment of the current and contemporary times, we will discover and perceive the philosophy of survival that the philosophers have painstakingly calculated. Ancient Chinese furniture has been favored by researchers and collectors at home and abroad in recent years, which is a potential factor that cannot be ignored.