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Hollywood Highway in Hong Kong has develop into one thing of a vacationer lure, with artwork galleries and vintage retailers densely clustered alongside the steep, slim street. But it surely was right here, within the late Nineteen Seventies, that funding banker Peter Fung began haunting the retailers and shopping for furnishings and antiques.
Based on his daughter Lynn Fung, the gathering began when her father went out to amass a brand new couch — however returned with a pair of vintage picket chairs. “My mom wasn’t finest happy, notably as they had been extraordinarily uncomfortable,” she laughs.
However that first buy sparked in her father a life-long curiosity in vintage Ming and Qing furnishings, self-importance circumstances, Japanese antiques and 18th-century silver, a lot so that each Saturday, “rain, shine or hurricane”, Fung went on shopping for expeditions after a dim sum lunch.
“On the time Hollywood Highway was the mecca for vintage collectors. As well as, as my father studied engineering, he’s fascinated by how issues are put collectively — so the talent in making vintage furnishings or self-importance circumstances intrigued him,” Fung says.
Over the many years the Fung residence steadily crammed along with his acquisitions and, as a youngster, Lynn admits, she was moderately embarrassed to deliver associates residence. “They discovered it spooky to sleep in a Ming six-poster mattress that everybody was satisfied was haunted.”
At this time the gathering is likely one of the world’s foremost assemblies of Ming and Qing huanghuali and zitan (arduous woods) furnishings. “About 70-80 per cent of the furnishings was purchased from sellers within the Hollywood Highway,” says Fung. So it was pure that when Peter Fung determined to show his treasures — now grown to about 7,000 objects — in his personal museum, it was proper on that street. He renovated a Nineteen Sixties constructing and created 4 flooring of show house: this March marks the tenth anniversary of its opening.
Peter Fung’s shopping for has slowed significantly and the working of the Liang Yi museum has now been handed on to Lynn. She manages it from London, the place she is now primarily based. “The timezone implies that I can work on the museum within the morning and be with my kids [aged four years and 18 months] within the afternoon,” she says. She has not adopted in her father’s footsteps so far as amassing is worried: “Perhaps as a result of I grew up with a lot, I’m extra minimalist in my strategy.”
However she is hands-on in giving route to the museum, and one side that’s essential to her is the show. The structure of the museum displays her style — “I needed to offer the items house,” says Lynn. “We prize the customer expertise: a lot of the reveals will be touched, and guests are inspired to sit down on the furnishings.” It’s a must to ebook a go to, and docents are there to elucidate. There are even dealing with workshops open to small teams for essentially the most delicate objects.
“My father desires recognition for Chinese language furnishings alongside different crafts, and, it have to be mentioned, that as a businessman he’s additionally conscious of its worth as an funding,” says Lynn. “I can’t affirm that the bodily house will survive endlessly; as with most households we don’t actually talk about that side of the long run, however we actually don’t intend to promote something.”
She is partnering with museums exterior Hong Kong and at the moment engaged on a present themed round vintage containers, to be held in Hangzhou in early 2025. She can also be enthusiastic about engaged on a joint exhibition with the Toledo Museum of Artwork in Ohio; they are going to pair their Previous Grasp work with Liang Yi’s Chinese language furnishings for a three-city tour in China beginning in September this yr.
I ask her how tough it’s to advertise a museum that exhibits works that aren’t — I select my phrase rigorously — “stylish”, in an artwork world fixated on Trendy and up to date artwork. She gently corrects the phrase “stylish” to “timeless” and explains: “That’s my mission as a steward of the gathering, to make these lovely items related and fascinating to at present’s era and the next ones.”
liangyimuseum.com
