refineDesign Home
Categories
- Furniture (55)
- Outdoor (8)
- Accessories (42)
- Interior Designers (29)
- Architects (13)
- Architecture (7)
- Textiles/Upholstery (16)
- Lighting (10)
- Art (16)
- Kitchen (8)
- Bath (2)
- Retailers (49)
- Carpet (1)
- Tile (4)
- Windows and Walls (6)
- Floors and Ceilings (5)
- Design/Decor (42)
- Gifts (13)
Archives
- November 2008 (13)
- October 2008 (37)
- September 2008 (20)
- August 2008 (21)
Syndicate
DC Inspiration, Chinese Craftsmanship, Part I
If you’re not already familiar with the ethereal beauty of DC-based Middle Kingdom Porcelain, here’s a good incentive to check them out: Bo and Alison Jia, who run Middle Kingdom from their Georgetown row house, recently collaborated with noted Landscape Architect Jim van Sweden to produce an expansive line of china. The line debuted this year with a set of four stunning tea cups that each depict an American variety of grasses.
“They represent our favorite New American Garden plants that we use,” says Ching-Fang Chen, a senior associate at Oehme van Sweden & Associates Inc., who took van Sweden’s inspiration and helped the Jias translate it into sketches and, ultimately, the hand-painted cups that are produced in China. “A cup is something you don’t just use, you enjoy as a piece of art,” Chen says.
And speaking of art, van Sweden just sent the cups to Evelyn Nef, whose Georgetown garden boasts the only Marc Chagall mosaic mural in the world that was made for a private residence. It was profiled in The Washington Post last month. The cups were a 95th-birthday present to Nef, who has one of the grasses depicted on them (hakonechloa macra ‘Aureola,’ portrayed on the green saucer above) growing right under the mural. “She was just thrilled,” van Sweden says.
Keep reading for the future plans between van Sweden and Middle Kingdom.
Bo Jia and van Sweden met several years ago while they were both working out at the Watergate’s gym. “I said I was a landscape architect and he said he was a china manufacturer, and I said, ‘I’ve always wanted to produce a line of china,’” van Sweden says. “I thought our New American Garden style would be perfect.”
Next to come out – probably sometime next year – will be a teapot that features clematis armandi, a creamy white flower with prominent leaves that grows outside van Sweden’s window.
Later, he hopes to roll out an entire line that includes lunch and dinner plates, bowls, and serving platters.
“It’s fun to go from designing an 80-acre private estate or a 1,000-acre park to the next minute, designing a teapot or a cup that you can hold in your hand,” van Sweden says. “It makes it really fascinating to work in all these different scales.”
In Part II of this post tomorrow, find out more about Bo and Alison Jia, who recently returned from their kilns in China with a rich supply of new offerings for this year.