The Wooden Poem

The Chinese classical furniture has played an important part in the Chinese culture. It has long history, its own system, national style and eastern romantic charm. The process of development of Chinese classical furniture is partly a show of history of Chinese culture. Furniture of Ming Dynasty has reached the zenith in the Chinese history and is unrivalled in all the furniture of the world with their unique artistic charm and strong cultural contents. The furniture Dynasty has smooth lines, concise models , tight structure , ingenious design , simple and unadorned appearances and the specially graceful style, strong national style and extremely high aesthetic value, which have realized the perfect combination of the science and artistry, and known as "a pearl of eastern art" and "wooden poem" . Furniture of Ming Dynasty together with other Chinese cultural symbols, contain dim and implicit, natural, graceful and poised and refined, beautiful and dignified characteristics and appeal to Chinese traditional scholar' s flavor, thus forming unique and magnificent Chinese culture in the east. All of the features of furniture of Ming Dynasty including highly -selected raw materials, elegant decorations, and defined construction have reflected scholar' s flavor and traditional scholar peculiar pursuit of culture. As Shitao says, "painting skills and methods should develop with the age " , study of furniture of Ming Dynasty can bring us noble and refined, simple and unadorned, harmonious and unique design ideas of scholars. Compare with the Western-style furniture, we must inherit and carry forward furniture of Ming Dynasty, but not simply copy and imitate, or plagiarize Western style. We should accumulate and incorporate the spirit of Chinese classical furniture to our present design, contain a " spirit " with succinct "shape" , and express the "god" "tendency" thoroughly, by which would we improve the modern design which combines both spirit and shape.