Thank you for the amazing performance for all the musicians. I love gratitude so much ! #細蓉 #wontonmeen #卓爵士 #teampixel #pixel6pro (at Wontonmeen) https://www.instagram.com/p/CevMPh6v2l0/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
First, Let’s Have A Cup Of Yuenyeung From Hong Kong
We were amazed when we arrived. The café located on the first floor of an old tenement building on Lai Chi Kok Road, Sham Shui Po, an inner city area in Hong Kong. With all those interesting furniture pieces by the design duo Pat and Denise, the setting in the cafe reminded people of scenes from local cinema in Hong Kong. There is an open bar and kitchen; rice pudding they served was sweet and simple.
Wontonmeen Café in Sham Shui Po, Hong Kong
We sat at a ping-pong table with a redesigned desk surface. Friends, neighbors and customers stopped by to greet Pat from time to time.
Pat was a petite girl. Our admiration for her grew as we imagined those weights she would have to carry when she collected wasted furniture as materials for re-creation. Her rate of speech was neither too fast nor too slow. She did not mince her words much when she delivered her ideas. We enjoyed a candid conversation. When we talked about the inscribed board that was placed beside the entrance, she told us that it was from a carpenter’s shop that was closing down. “It would be a huge waste to throw these boards away. These sorts of carpenters’ studios are being increasingly rare in Hong Kong. We plan to hold an exhibition soon, in a hope that the general public would notice the value of these shops,” Pat said.
Yeunyeung’s love for Hong Kong begins with the support to local resources, then the creation of their own world.
That’s why we think Yuenyeung is exclusive in Hong Kong. East meets west, at this particular age, in this particular place.
Why would you name you brand “Yeunyeung”?
“Yuenyeung” is the furniture brand I cofound with Dennis.
Dennis and I wish to give furniture an afterlife. I am an interior designer; basically I work as a freelance project manager. Dennis is a photographer. Our works are like Yuenyeung— the mixture of coffee and Hong Kong-style milk tea — something seemingly impossible to work, yet the outcome turns out to be surprisingly satisfying and delicious.
SIGN SHELF — Sign shelf is a selection of found wooden objects, modified and combined together. The shel’s background repurposes hand painted shop signs that were also found in Hong Kong.
Yuenyeung is official launched during the International Design Festival Berlin (DMY). How was the response? What are Yuenyeung’s short term goals?
The target audience of DMY was citizens in Berlin, so the comments we received were not academic reviews. The response was quite good. They generally found our works quite interesting. Yuenyeung is officially established since then, so people learn that the two of us has been working on such a project.
In the short term, we would like to finish more works. After the completion of four works, we plan to consign a gallery for sales.
Instead of pursuing speed and convenience, we would rather sincerely create something of our own. It is an alternative for a thoughtless purchase of furniture from a certain brand name stores. We hope that people would begin to appreciate the qualities that Hong Kong possesses, in spite of a reverent admiration for western designs.
Where do Yuenyeung’s inspiration come from? Is there any enlightening figure when it comes to the design of Yeunyeung?
In fact, there are a lot of resources in Hong Kong. For instance, there is a unique aesthetics embodied in those stalls on Temple Street—it is astonishing how they build a lampshade out of a cup. Jun Aoki, who has design numerous showrooms and buildings for LV, once held a talk in Hong Kong and mentioned how impressive he thought the patterns of our window frames were. Since then I began to notice the beauty of things around me.
TANGRAM — In Hong Kong, grassroots workers use trolleys everyday to move around their neighbourhoods. The locals use whatever materials they could find to wrap the back side of the trolley to prevent goods from falling off. Inspired by this street mentality, tangram was woven with used garment labels to create a sitting.
Where do Yuenyeung acquire materials for re-creation? Do you collect them? Or do you purchase them?
All of these materials are collected within Sham Shui Po. We never order anything. Sham Shui Po is full of treasure. We name one of our works after the shop where we collect the material. That table is called “Ngau Kee” as the table was from Ngau Kee Seafood Restaurant.
YEH FUNG BEDSIDE TABLE — Yeh Fung bedside table is a collage of found and locally sourced objects. The dalian marble tabletop cantilevers and can be rotated easily.
Are the designs by Yuenyeung based on the malleability of material collected? Or they are more a realization of a preliminary idea?
It greatly depends on the material we find. Hong Kong people are deeply influenced by the former generation. We normally hate the idea of having something going to waste. So we try to inject new life in these “wasted” furniture. We pay effort to make these wastes work again. We try to give them an afterlife.
