An emphasis on nature and harmony in design appeals to the Bay Area’s “green” sensibilities.

For more than 150 years, the Bay Area has been home to people from the Far East. It’s not surprising that the artistic and spiritual influence of this region—from China to the Philippines, Japan to Vietnam—has had a profound effect on the way we strive to live with more simplicity and intention to the way we want our living spaces to emanate beauty and calm.

The term “Asian aesthetic” may have slipped into the lexicon, but it begs the question: What exactly is it? With the diversity of Asian cultures represented in the Bay Area, of course there are many Asian styles; but design experts note common elements that create an aesthetic. Lonnie Lee, owner of Vessel in Berkeley, says many traditions use nature as a reference point.

“Asian art often articulates the fundamental nature of a thing, its most reduced essence, nothing more or less,” says Lee, whose shop features the work of local artists as well as contemporary, vintage and antique items. “And traditionally, art and design from this part of the world has taken the natural world into consideration, working with natural elements rather than imposing order on them, which is the Western way.”

Some of Vessel’s offerings that make this connection clear include simple teak serving spoons, handmade dinnerware in black or white glazes from Thimi, Nepal; ebony-hued stacking incense burners, “twig nests” in brown, clear, black and chartreuse glass; as well as Chinese antiques like a porcelain vase from the Jiangsu region, a slim document chest made of black elm or metal firecracker holders.

Style eyes: Pat Benson, an interior designer, and her husband, Jerry Mulrooney, travel to Asia three or four times a year to purchase items for their Harmonique Home store in Berkeley. Benson says design trends are more casual and eclectic these days. Photo courtesy Harmonique Home.

The emphasis on harmony with nature connects the aesthetic of the Far East with the environmental or so-called “green” movement, Lee says. Vessel carries many items that have been recycled or reclaimed, like footstools made from skyscraper timber, floor pillows découpaged with newspaper, and clutch purses made from skateboards. Installing in your home a 19th-century Tibetan chest (complete with marks from the craftsman’s carving tool and the original, rich red-painted floral design) or a street vendor’s dim sum box-turned-side table is its own version of recycling. And it connects you to the people who made and used it before you and telegraphs a global awareness.

Mixing it up

Our lifestyles have changed dramatically, becoming more casual and relaxed, according to Pat Benson, an interior designer and co-owner with her husband, Jerry Mulrooney, of Harmonique Home on Solano Avenue. With that change comes an interest in mixing styles from various traditions.

“A traditional-style home furnished with both Asian antiques and contemporary pieces is simple, beautiful and very livable,” Benson says. “And that’s what people want. It’s not about the formal living room anymore, but rather, living spaces that are comfortable and reflect people’s own experiences—if they’ve been to Burma, they want a Burmese pagoda box in their home. If China, a Chinese cabinet.”

Benson and Mulrooney make three to four trips a year to Asia to find the treasures they stock at Harmonique Home: large jade-handled horsehair calligraphy brushes that Chinese street artists use with water to write poetry on the sidewalk; intricately carved wood windows that can be hung as art or used as headboards; teak spirit houses from Thailand, tiny replicas of the family home that are placed outside to honor the gods; a Mongolian lacquer-coated drum with zodiac animals painted in red, green and ochre (put a round of glass on top and try it as a coffee table); goddess statues from Thailand and Vietnam; even a 300-year-old papier-mâché temple Buddha (it used to be covered in gold leaf, but that was rubbed off long ago by pilgrims). They also carry work from artisans they meet in their travels, including celadon crackle-glazed tableware a Thai family makes in its backyard kiln, and astounding wooden vases made from the roots of Chinese fir trees (Chinese farmers do the hard work of digging out the roots for this purpose so that new trees can more easily be replanted).

Vessel’s valuables: (top to bottom) Vessel on Ashby in Berkeley offers a skateboard- turned-clutch purse; unique glass tumblers; and a table of treasures from the Far East. Photo courtesy Vessel.

“Chinese antiques have a simplicity of design that combines with an intricacy that interests people,” Benson says. “A Ming Period calligraphy table with scrollwork on the legs works well in a Craftsman-style home, for example.”

Tan Cheng, manager of Papillon Home on Solano Avenue in Berkeley, agrees that Asian design can blend well with other styles. “Let’s say if you had a French style or English style, there are more curvatures to work with,” Cheng explains. “In the Asian and Indonesian style, the lines are simple. You can actually mix these with curvy lines to complement what you already have.” What’s more, he says, European designs have been influenced by Asia for centuries.

Vessel’s Lee enjoys helping her clients combine form and function in surprising ways.

“It can be fun to play with counterpoint,” she says. “To furnish a room with pieces that have function, but also a spark of beauty, like a mid-1800s lacquer teapot, originally used for cold-water tea ceremonies in China, or a tall vase designed to look like an egret, with a spray of poppies.”

Adding an Asian flair to your home can take many forms, from large pieces of furniture to smaller accents.

Imari Gallery in Sausalito is known for its collection of Japanese screens, including one that pictures the sun over Japan’s Musashino plain that dates from the Momoyama Period, circa 1600. Berkeley’s Scriptum specializes in Japanese prints from the 1900s to the present that are made with a variety of techniques, including stencil, etching, lithograph, woodblock and wood engraving. Miki’s Paper, also in Berkeley, offers Japanese paintings and handmade, hand-dyed paper, as well as cards, sketch and writing journals, letterboxes and stationery.

For sheer volume, it’s hard to beat the Zentner Collection in Emeryville with its 35,000-square-foot gallery. Walk through, and you’ll find (mostly Japanese) treasures like Meiji Period (1868 to 1912) ikebana baskets made of split bamboo; 19th-century Imari porcelain chargers; a granite panel from a Tang Dynasty temple with layers on layers of inscriptions; a screen intricately decorated with birds and flowers made of inlaid lacquer, mother-of-pearl and bone; and countless tansu, or chests of drawers, in varying sizes (all of which were made to sit flush on the ground on a tatami mat).

Perry Zentner runs the business with his wife, Jenny, and the couple has been collecting for almost 30 years. Zentner Collection primarily supplies high-end antiques to designers, museums and collectors, but is also open to the public. The Zentners also offer a line of new reproduction furniture and Asian antique restoration services.

Do you bamboo?

If the Asian influence on our home environments includes an awareness of the environment, the trend toward bamboo flooring makes perfect sense. Because it is a grass, not a tree, bamboo is more sustainable than traditional woods used for flooring. Its visual appeal is particularly distinctive: it can be horizontally or vertically “cut” and each technique gives a different look (in horizontally cut bamboo, you can see the stalk joints); it can also be bought as laminate.

Bamboo flooring sold in the East Bay comes primarily from China, although the material can also be harvested in other parts of Asia. The bamboo can be “floated” on the floor’s undersurface or glued to concrete. And as bamboo has become increasingly popular as a flooring option, its durability has improved and the range of available colors has expanded: while the most common color for the material is a light gold, it is now available in mocha or espresso tones as well.

Why has bamboo become popular? Because it’s earth-friendly, yes, but also because of an increased global awareness, according to Bill Solomon, sales representative at Floor Dimensions in Berkeley.

“As people from Asia have moved to this country, they’ve asked for this flooring,” he says. “They had it at home, and they know about it. And their interest has raised interest here.”

Michael Magnes, manager of the Floor Store in Richmond, estimates that his company sells at least 50 percent more bamboo than it did two years ago.

“It’s an easily growable resource, and it’s probably 20 percent cheaper than, say, oak,” Magnes says.

Like other woods, bamboo needs time to acclimate in the home where it is to be installed, at least three days, Magnes says. This is particularly important in our often moist, changeable climate. Although bamboo isn’t as hard as traditional woods used in home flooring and can therefore scratch more easily, with a urethane coating it can look good for 20 years or more.

Like Vessel’s egret-shaped vase or Harmonique Home’s jade calligraphy brushes, bamboo flooring can create a dramatic yet spare effect that connects a room to the natural world and plays with positive and negative space—another important characteristic of Asian art and design, according to Myong Stebbins, a Korean-American Berkeley-based painter whose work has been featured at Vessel.

“In Asian arts, what isn’t there is just as important as what is, and negative space can be an object as well,” Stebbins says. “There’s a particular beauty in reducing a thing to its essential parts.”

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Kate Madden Yee has long loved the fir-green, early-1900s Chinese cabinet in her living room.

Home Front

Floor Dimensions 1081 Eastshore Highway, Berkeley, (800) 378-4300; www.floordimensions.com.

Floor Store, 5327 Jacuzzi St., # 2A, Richmond, (510) 527-3203.

Flooring Alternatives, 758 Gilman St., Berkeley, (510) 550-4449; www.flooringalternatives.com.

Guillermina Japanese and Asian Antiques, 111 West Richmond Avenue, Point Richmond, 510-237-0036; www.guillermina.com.

Harmonique Home, 1820 Solano Ave., Suite C2, Berkeley, (510) 559-3229; www.harmoniquehome.com.

Hida Tool & Hardware Company, 1333 San Pablo Ave., Berkeley, (800) 443-5512; www.hidatool.com.

Imari Gallery, 40 Filbert Ave., Sausalito, (415) 332-0245; www.imarigallery.com.

Miki’s Paper, 1801 Fourth St., Berkeley, (510) 845-9530.

Papillon Home, 1882 Solano Ave., Berkeley, (510) 526-8998; www.papillonhome.com.

Scriptum, 798 Creston Road, Berkeley, (510) 526-1236; www.scriptum.com.

Tulip Hardwood Floors, 3501 Carlson Blvd., El Cerrito, (510) 558-2030; www.tulipfloors.com.

Vessel, 3026 Ashby Ave., Berkeley, (510) 981-8100; www.vesselforhomeandyou.com.

Zentner Collection, 5757 Horton St., Emeryville, (510) 653-5181; www.zentnercollection.com.