The Vision Of Past, Present & Future
To create exquisite Chinese objet d’art lifestyle pieces for the 21st century, one must be well-informed and deserving of the country’s 5,000 years of warmth, balance and grace in craftsmanship heritage. For Jiang Qiong Er, who in 2008 founded Shang Xia 「上下」, a design house rooted in China’s rich and vibrant aesthetic and culture, this unparalleled celebration of skill, detail and artistry is literally in her lineage. Her maternal grandfather, Jiang Xuanyi, was a famous painter and her father, Xing Tonghe, is the architect and curator of the Shanghai Museum, which houses China’s most valuable cultural objects from early porcelain masterpieces to paintings and calligraphy. As a young girl, Jiang found solace and inspiration in the beauty of Chinese landscapes while travelling the country with her parents; returning home, they would bring what they saw to life through drawings. Shang Xia, under the current patronage of French maison Hermés, is Qiong Er’s tribute to her inheritance of creativity, a continuation of the legacy designers and craftsmen before her have set in motion. The result is an ongoing dialogue of up and down, past and future, tradition and innovation, various energies that enliven balanced living. For Jiang, “up and down” – the literal translation of Shang Xia – stands for “the harmonious coexistence of all the contradictions we are surrounded by: people and nature, city and countryside, east and west.”
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