When you enter Phoenix Charm, you feel like you are in a classic oriental home, and experience instant tranquility.

This boutique store selling home dcor items such as curtains, dining table sets, bed runners, cushions and lamp shades, draws a lot from Chinese folk culture.

From a fish-shaped cloth light shade, a porcelain vase in the shape of a woman in traditional costume and an embroidered silk tissue container to a carved wooden wine holder, wall hangings of clay masks and straw doilies, the items embody some element or other of traditional Chinese culture, without sacrificing a sense of contemporary aesthetics.

"We hope to bring a bit of traditional Chinese art into people's everyday lives," says Wang Zirui, the designer of the boutique.

Wang became smitten with Chinese folk crafts after seeing a picture of an elegant and delicate Fengxiang clay sculpture in a magazine, seven years ago.

She looked for it everywhere in Xi'an, Shaanxi province, and eventfully got one in a village in Fengxiang county. She also brought back many other local crafts such as tiger pillows and embroidered shoes. Her 50-sq-m home soon filled up various folk crafts, paintings, and even antique furniture collected from all over the country.

"It's such a pity that many old household items that carry auspicious meanings are not deemed fit to use in a modern home," says the energetic Wang, who is in her 40s.

Wang Zirui in her boutique store with various home decor items. Photos by Chen Xiaorong

Wang draws inspiration from her collection and adapts patterns, shapes and materials to design her home dcor items. For example, she has used the shape of the traditional southern China fragrant bag and exaggerated the size to make a big pillow, which she has filled with corduroy instead of cotton. "Modern Chinese prefer corduroy pillows," Wang explains.

For years, she has been spending all her money on her collections and on books and magazine related to folk art and home design.

The expense has paid off. "She has really good taste and does thorough research for her collection," says Wang Mi, an artist working in Han Meilin Studio. Han is a famous Chinese artist most recognized today for his creation of the Fuwa mascots for the Beijing Olympics.

Wang Mi is most impressed by a butterfly-shaped lantern at Phoennix Charm. "It is made from well-produced indigo cloth. Even the indigo cloth producers I work with now can't print such rich colors and vivid patterns," says the artist.

Wang found the cloth in a village in Nantong, a southern city in Jiangsu province. The method of printing is considered part of China's National Intangible Cultural Heritage. Many of Wang's designs have turned such traditional crafts into tangible artworks for people's homes.

"People are influenced by the homes they create," says Wang, leaning on a newly-designed cushion, made of two back-to-back fish shaped pillows. She says the pillow's shape and elasticity are just right for a human backbone.

Wang's enthusiasm for traditional folk arts helped her rope in five of her friends, aged from 20 to 60, to open the boutique in Shunhuang Road, a newly developed street in Chaoyang district. The boutique has three rooms - living room, bedroom, and reading room - with several pieces of antique furniture to match. At the entrance of the living room stands a delicate red wooden cabinet for storing shoes. It has been adapted from an ancient case for storing toilets. Wang asked craftsmen to add several drawers to the case, to convert it into a cabinet.

"Scattering a few pieces of antique Chinese furniture in a modern home has become a fad nowadays. Instead of packing the entire house with heavy, dark-colored antique furniture, having a few pieces helps avoid an oppressive atmosphere," says Zhang Jinge, general manager of an interior design company in Beijing. He also appreciates Wang's choice of color for each room of her boutique. The bedroom is predominantly red. Red curtains and bed covers with traditional phoenix and peony patterns dominate this space. "It reminds couples of their happiness at their wedding ceremonies," says Wang.

Swaying an old wooden bassinet beside the bed in this bedroom, Wang says, "The presence of a woman brings a home its true sense."

The logo of Phoenix Charm is a paper cut featuring a bride sitting in an enclosed Chinese sedan chair, decorated with figures of a phoenix and dragon. These patterns are symbols of a house and the bride, wearing a silver lock pendant, is represented as ready to use her flair to make this house a home.

As Wang and her clients prefer hand-made materials, she supplies craftswomen in the villages of north China with silk threads and batik cloth brought from south China, to realize her designs.

People are also becoming more aware of environmental and health concerns, and this is affecting the way they choose to decorate their homes.

"Take indigo cloth for example. The printing is done with vegetable dyes and the cloth is also believed to carry health benefits," says Yang Yang, a professor who teaches folk art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Tsinghua University.

"The production of indigo cloth takes time, but why do we need to make everything quickly? "

However, hand-made products are always expensive because of the work and materials involved. Wang believes that China's 5,000-year-old folk culture should be adapted to modern living.

"If I had a grandson, I would like to send him a lovely cloth tiger, rather than a birthday cake for his birthday," Wang says. "The lucky tiger, regarded by the Chinese people for generations as a symbol of warding off evil and preventing disease, would make a much more valuable gift."

Wang likes watching South Korean TV shows, many of which are centered on family life. She admires the genuine courtesy shown by the young to the elderly, and the patriotism evident in the most trivial conversations.

Playing a Chinese zither in the reading room, Wang shares her understanding of Confucius's concept of home.

Confucius said, "to put the old in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must cultivate the personal life; we must first set our hearts right". And to Wang, cultivating one's personal life means designing a harmonious living space.

(China Daily 09/05/2008 page18)