Cumine Court, Oriental Daily

The text below is a translation of the original Oriental Daily feature.

Not everyone knows how to weave inherited pieces back into daily life. In its 25 May 2019 edition (written by Yu Choi-yiu), Oriental Daily News featured this Cumine Court flat in North Point. The owners are two sisters with a deep love of art who, over many years, had gathered antique furniture and tapestries rich in history and wanted their collection properly displayed. Regina Kwok, design director of Artwill Interior Design House, took on the brief and chose to replan the whole home along the lines of a gallery, so that every treasured piece had a place of its own.

To let the collection take the lead, the team kept the main hall calm and ordered: the television tucked into joinery, the wall between hall and dining room left clean, and space cleared for antique rosewood pieces. A prominent spot in the living room carries the owners' beloved Manchurian glass, holding on to a Lingnan architectural character while creating a visual blend of old and new, East and West. The living room takes its cue from the quiet grace of Chinese ink painting, with the dining area echoing the same Eastern mood.

The glass sliding door dividing dining room and kitchen is the home's finishing stroke, carrying an image of the ink work Shanshui in the Mirage by Shanghai artist Yang Yongliang and extending art into an everyday route, while the kitchen follows the same pared-back line as the hall. A corridor beside the dining room leads to the study, where late-Qing calligraphy hangs on the wall and a sprung fold-down bed stands ready for guests who stay over.

The bedroom layout was reworked too: Regina folded the guest washroom into the younger sister's room so that each main bedroom became its own suite. Curves and floral motifs run through the scheme, from cut-leather wardrobe fronts in the elder sister's room to patterned wallpaper and a mannequin stand dressed in a qipao in the younger sister's room, while a bathroom wall sets out a rose pattern in colourful mosaic tiles in answer to the owners' love of pattern. To explore every corner of this collector's home, you are warmly invited to visit the full Cumine Court project page.

Originally published by Oriental Daily, Section E2 . 25 May 2019