Modern before its time, the Ming Dynasty provided a period of native Chinese rule spanning roughly four centuries from 1368 to 1644 between the eras of Mongol and Manchu dominance, respectively. It exerted immense cultural influence throughout East Asia, with notable achievements in furniture design and craft, still echoed by contemporary artisans. Sun at Six – an AAPI family-owned and operated design practice out of San Jose, California – provides a direct throughline to the timeless tradition of Chinese joinery as they present the Wolo Collection in an expansion of their visual language.
Founded in 2017 by creative director Antares Yee, and supported by his sister as the Head of Operations, Capella Yee, the family-run factory and young studio continues a storied lineage of creative expression that began in China with their mother, Maria Yee, who studied classical Chinese joinery under a master craftsman restoring furniture for the Forbidden City. She pioneered eco-design with her eponymous business some 30 years ago introducing new technologies that would lay the groundwork for this generation. Contemporizing a historical aesthetic, Sun at Six now implements those same practices while incorporating block shapes, jewel-tone colors, and plush fabrics distilled through their lens.
Ming-style furniture is introspective resulting from the collaboration between literati scholars and craftsmen for furnishings that reject vulgar opulence to instead embrace an elegance that is intellectually tempered. Steeped in allegory, the seemingly minimalist, slightly whimsical gestures are fabricated through maximalist engineering such that design is not divorced from function. Simple silhouettes are realized through intricate wood constructs – without nails or screws – using techniques like the finger joint, three-way miter, or wedging a mortise and tenon. Sun at Six shares the understanding that design carries signature cultural elements like harmony, balance, and modesty as they explore the role of objects in a physically emotive space, whether that be for the containment and ease or invigoration of its occupants.
“I distinctly remember, there was this energy post-Covid where so many people were like, ‘I am leaving this past couple years behind.’ It just felt like people wanted a new page,” Antares Yee says of the latest collection’s inception. “We feel like it’s time to switch from the mindset of soft, cozy curves. Instead, we want to go for hard edges. We’re going to go with contrast, all with 90 degrees, heaviness in some places juxtaposed with thinness in others. And so that, in some ways, is our direct response to previous times in an effort to move ourselves forward mentally.”
Currently comprising five pieces, Wolo presents itself with an imperial posture, inimitable in construction and aesthetics. The Wolo Media Cabinet and Wolo Sideboard feature solid frame-and-panel construction that celebrates the natural contrasts and coloring of makata, with its strikingly dark heartwood, further accentuated with a luminescent sheen that shifts as it tracks daylight. The Wolo Dining Table, Wolo Coffee Table, and Wolo Round Coffee Table continue the material story while adding joint articulation to the narrative. Thick, columnar legs quickly taper appearing to attach to the tabletop underside with a thin connective tissue, which creates a sculptural effect. The deftly carved, simple geometric appendages emphasize the quality of the solid, sustainable wood oft discarded as waste.
What’s more, the ingenious construction recontextualizes what it means to be an object of beauty. “Part of our goal, especially with this collection too, is to be able to produce work that’s a little bit more timeless, that’s versatile enough to fit in, many, many trend cycles, and lots of different spaces based on things like color and simplicity of form while shying away from and pushing back against a trend driven culture.”
To learn more about this and other collections from the brand, visit sunatsix.com.