NEIGHBORHOOD SHOPPING : Chinatown: Bounty of Old and New
Finding treasures for the home doesn’t have to be an expensive proposition.
Designer Julia Winston, who has created warm, eclectic interiors for Hollywood filmmakers and L.A. social stalwarts, went on a search for objects that appeal to the eye and to the pocketbook. She said she liked the idea of combing the streets of Chinatown, off North Broadway in Los Angeles, where she had never shopped before.
Winston’s tastes have always been offbeat, she said. “My whole theory is specializing in periods that are not popular, that are out.” Her current fascinations include “Anglo-Indian” furniture--pieces made in Victorian India for British colonists--and Chinese styles by William Haines, the actor-turned-interior decorator whose heyday was Hollywood of the ‘30s and ‘40s.
In Chinatown, on Gin Ling Way, she found a wealth of items that pleased her, from a feather duster ($2.50, from Import Bazaar) that is essential for “dusting anything gold leaf,” she said, to Japanese persimmon-colored lacquered boxes with mother of pearl inlays ($12 to $45, from Fong’s). The boxes, circa 1920 to 1930, were slightly faded with age, which is precisely why she liked them.
At Alex Cheung Co., an established antique dealer across the way on Chung King Road, she gravitated toward “simple and peasant-like” things. She made a beeline for 300-year-old Chinese porcelain rice bowls ($45) painted blue and white or celadon, some of which bore original red wax export seals on the bottom. “Their imperfections are wonderful,” she said. “These would look perfect in modern and antique homes.”
Winston was equally enchanted with the new and ephemeral, including lacquered bamboo bird cages ($40 and up, also from Alex Cheung) with hand-painted porcelain feeder bowls ($5 to $15 a pair), as well as a vast selection of earthenware teapots ($18 to $125, from Fong’s) known as Yixing pottery. Winston could easily see the cutout paper kites ($3.95, from Kwan Yuen Co.) that depict butterflies and birds being put on a wall--any wall. “They’d be great in Hispanic and Southwestern houses,” she said. “After all, you can get sick of serapes.”
Chinatown: A Shopping Guide
* Import Bazaar, 486 Gin Ling Way; (213) 620-8808.
* Alex Cheung Co., 936-938 Chung King Road; (213) 629-4705.
* Fong’s, 939-943 Chung King Road; (213) 626-5904.
* Kwan Yuen Co. (The Gift Fair), 437 Gin Ling Way; (213) 625-3176.
