A blog of Chinese art, culture and design

Chinese folklore teaches that when a baby is born, the man in the moon ties an invisible red thread around its leg. He ties the other end of the magic thread to the baby’s destined mate, and as the two grow up a mysterious force will draw them to one another. If their paths cross, they will marry.

The sense of immutable union underlying this story is so engrained within Chinese culture that it enters every aspect of home life. Pairs of cabinets, chairs, and screens evoke the married couple who form the center of the family. Relatives and friends present young couples with gifts in pairs, such as paintings of bamboo and plum, to bless their home with harmony and children. The Chinese character “Double Happiness” is an even more common wedding symbol, often found stamped onto envelopes, embroidered on textiles, and painted on porcelain jars. Expressing the wish to multiply the couple’s joy, the symbol combines the two characters representing contentment.

This understanding of wholeness through pairing is so fundamental that it guides nearly every aspect of life. All three major Chinese religions—Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism—teach that harmony can be achieved through the union of two opposites into one whole: male and female, yin and yang, sun and moon. 

 The philosophy of pairing permeates Chinese design as well. Chinese courtyard gardens strive to balance the duality of natural and manmade worlds by joining crooked paths with straight ones, or setting twisted stones alongside smooth ones. Feng Shui’s approach to space planning relies heavily on coupled sets to bring balance to a room—whether a pair of chairs, matched sets of vases, or two stools designed to flank a sofa or bed.

A beautiful example of coupled furniture is a pair of 19th century red lacquered cabinets in which the original craftsman wedded the cabinets with a pattern of plum branches that spreads across the doors. When one cabinet is viewed alone, the design appears to be an abstract motif or the shadow of many years of wear on the lacquer. It is only when the cabinets are placed side by side that the picture emerges, marrying the pieces in an unbroken set.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 5th, 2010 at 10:28 PM and is filed under Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.