Benny Peng 彭本力 A&B Studio
Thanks to some friends I got to know about Mr. Benny Peng of A&B Studio. Since 15 years he's been making fine quality silk albums and boxes all by hand.
Before that he was already famous for his frames, then he simply took interest in this new kind of craftsmanship and started self-teaching himself. Four other people decided to follow him in this little business and they've been working together for the last 10 years, making silk-covered boxes of any sizes and colors while Mr. Benny takes care of special requests, customized products and new designs. He will adapt to your request (inside feasibility limits) providing you with unique pieces.
Before that he was already famous for his frames, then he simply took interest in this new kind of craftsmanship and started self-teaching himself. Four other people decided to follow him in this little business and they've been working together for the last 10 years, making silk-covered boxes of any sizes and colors while Mr. Benny takes care of special requests, customized products and new designs. He will adapt to your request (inside feasibility limits) providing you with unique pieces.
We use silk fabric with traditional Chinese patterns or plain cotton, but we can also use any fabrics you provide us with (a/n that's the great part of having something handmade). The silk we use comes from Hangzhou (杭州) and each pattern is related to a specific meaning as in Chinese culture.
Who are your customers? I don't have many Chinese customers, most of them are Western people interested in Chinese products and tradition, they want to bring back home a piece of our culture and they come here for our quality. We don't do any kind of advertisement, it's mostly word-of-mouth, that's how our customers get to know about our business. We produce just for private people, we don't take in orders from companies or other businesses, that would be too much work to handle just among us and we cannot change our quality standards. Do you have any shop around the city? We just have this small workshop which serves also as selling point and another one where we just create products. Before we had a bigger place always in the same area, with a little showroom included, but we moved here 3 years ago. If anybody wants to buy something has to come here, before we used to deliver to people's house but we don't provide that service any more. There's just one store in the city that has some of our creations, Simply Life in Xintiandi. It's been for a long time now, they started buying from us after two years we began with the business. And how is going the business so far? We have a lot of orders right now, lot of people is planning to go back home for summer holiday and they want to bring presents with them, so we're overloaded with things to do. |
How long does it take to create a tea-box for example?
I cannot say how long for one, but to create 8/10 of them around 2 days and half, without considering the framework of course. First we cut the cardboard, then we build the box, we wait for the glue to dry and polish it in order to take away any imperfections, finally we can cover it with fabric. If anybody showed some interest, would you be willing to teach them your job? No one ever asked me to teach him/her, just sometimes kids want to try, but if someone ever asked me to learn I would charge quite a lot. I wouldn't just teach how to do this job, but how to start the whole business and that would take a lot of time away from my own business! In Western Universities you have a lot of workshops where you can learn how to do mock-ups and other manual stuff, but in China is very bad, it's just theory and Chinese students don't learn how to physically make things. |
I still had a lot of questions I wanted to ask Mr. Peng, but I didn't want to distract him too much from his job so I decided to keep them for a second visit. I must say he seems very proud of what he does and happy with his little business, he's in a good network and has a considerable amount of job to take care of.