| | I risk souding silly to be so in love with furniture, but here's my story.
I am a fan of mid-century modern furniture, anything from designer pieces to no name Danish modern furniture. There is something about their clean lines and sculptural profiles that I really like. I love some of the classic pieces from designers like Charles & Ray Eames, Arne Jacobson, Eero Saarinen and Harry Bertoia, but the cost of any one of their pieces is enough to feed a family of four in HK for a month. As much as I like them, I am not ready to plunk down $500 for a chair. Plus I don't think Johnny is very fond of that idea either. So I have been drooling over magazine photos and home decor blogs whenever I spot these lovely pieces.
I know there is a market out there for vintage mid-century furniture, in flea markets, on eBay, Craigslist, etc., but being in Hong Kong really limits my options to purchase from these sources. There are no such flea markets in Hong Kong, and buying from eBay or Craigslist and paying for the hefty shipping cost to Hong Kong pretty much defeats the original intent of finding a good deal.
There is one place where I browse almost daily in hopes of finding something special. It's a classifed section of a website for HK expats. With the transient nature of expats, there are always new postings of people putting up their furniture for sale because they are moving out of HK, or the new apartment they are moving to just cannot fit the queen-sized bed they bought only a year ago. The problem with most expats' furniture though, is that they are mostly the cheap-y stuff from Ikea (ourselves included) or local furniture shops.
So, imagine my delight when I found a posting for two cool looking rattan chairs for a mere HKD80. The chairs are not by any designers but their unique shapes reminded me of the mid-century modern designs. I finally went to pick these up today and guess what? The lady who keeps these chairs in storage had a few more pieces of goodies! In her little storage space I spotted a Danish mid-century wood cabinet and an Eames plastic chair that I've been drooling over. I wasn't ready to get the cabinet right away but I wasn't leaving without that chair. She wasn't planning to sell the chair but sold it to me in the end. I paid HKD230 for the three chairs, that's less than USD30! The same Eames chair would cost over USD300 new! Yay!
Now I just have to find room for that cabinet in our new (smaller) apartment. 
 
Charly's quite enamored of the Eames chair, too.
These rattan chairs are surprisingly comfortable. The lady bought them in Japan.
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| | Posted 7/12/2008 4:18 AM - 58 Views - 2 eProps - 2 comments
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i also like carol catalano, george nelson (dude, his coconut chair is $4k! insane..). those rattan chairs are very nice too..they would be perfect on our patio..i love shopping for furniture but once your place is filled up, you're pretty much done..time to get a bigger place i guess? :P
