Collection History and Culture of Pear Furniture

In the collection industry, Hua Li Mu Collection is an abbreviation for Hua Li Mu antique furniture collection. The stolen pear wood belongs to the “new pear” category, which is different from the old material “yellow pear wood” referred to in the collection. Even if it is made into furniture, it cannot become a collection due to its lack of cultural connotations and historical inheritance, let alone appreciation space.

Elegant and dignified Ming and Qing furniture with smooth lines has become a new trend in antique collection, among which yellow pear wood furniture is particularly popular due to its advantages of simplicity and elegance, hard wood, beautiful grain colors, and fragrance. To this day, a piece of Ming style furniture is often worth one or two million yuan, and some rare items have appreciated by 5-10 times over the past decade. Of course, these rosewood furniture sought after in the market are all high-quality Chinese furniture with high artistic and cultural connotation inherited from the past years. They are precious because of their age, and valuable because they are not renewable.

Due to the golden and warm color of Huanghuali wood, the heartwood color is dark reddish brown or dark brown, and the texture is clear. It is very beautiful like flowing clouds and water, so it became the preferred material for high-end furniture production in the Ming and early Qing dynasties. This caused a large number of Huali wood to be excessively harvested, and by the middle of the Qing dynasty, Huanghuali wood had sharply decreased and was on the brink of extinction, And it was during that period that Hainan pear, known as the most famous pear in China, sharply decreased and faced extinction.

In the mid to late Qing Dynasty, rosewood had to be used instead of rosewood to make high-end high-end furniture. According to experts’ estimates, the number of Ming and Qing style Huanghuali furniture currently surviving is only about 10000 pieces. As early as 1960, China’s “Reference Standards for Cultural Relics Export Appraisal” stipulated that all furniture made of yellow pear wood, red sandalwood, ebony, and old chicken wing wood, regardless of age, shall not be exported; Furniture made of other materials, including screens, insets, plaques, lamp holders, hanging lamps, wall lamps, etc., produced before 1795, are not allowed to be exported. Its preciousness can be imagined.

In order to protect the destructive logging of this pear tree, the country has listed it as a second level protected wild plant and clearly stipulates that no one is allowed to purchase or sell pear trees and their products at will. That is to say, Hainan rosewood is currently unable to legally enter the market for circulation, and most of the legally circulated rosewood products and materials in the market are imported from Southeast Asian countries such as Thailand. These products can only be called rosewood furniture, as they are still continuously produced and circulated, and do not have collectible value.

Collection is a comprehensive discipline that integrates history, art, literature, and other fields. It is an ancient and beneficial cultural activity that accumulates human civilization and inspires wisdom. He Xiang believes that only by protecting the growing rosewood, can this precious tree species recover from the excessive logging hundreds of years ago and be better utilized in the future, blooming with new artistic charm. Instead of illegally picking immature rosewood for the sake of a small profit in front of us, as we do now. These immature rosewood trees, due to their soft wood and straight patterns, do not fully reflect the utilization value of this precious tree species, ultimately causing the already precious rosewood to be wasted in vain.