Other stores in Taipei have followed Chen's footsteps, adjusting their stock from Zitan and Huanghuali pieces to more affordable softwood pieces, though few can report growing sales.
"Between 1992 and 1995, I was selling dozens of items per month," owner of Artasia (亞細亞佳) John Ang (洪光明) recalls of the consumer frenzy 10 years ago. Expensive hardwood pieces currently may wait in his shop for a month before being bought.
Ang added that hardwood pieces have become difficult to source, another reason for diversifying into cheaper softwood products. He now sells elm pieces from Shanxi Province (山西) and items made of fine grained southern elm called Ju wood (櫸木) from Jiangsu Province (江蘇). Ang also purchases furniture in Guangdong (廣東) and Shandong (山東) Provinces.
The stock at Ang's store is more tailored to average consumers looking for home decoration than to dedicated collectors. Ang sells official's hat chairs for about NT$12,000 or matching softwood chairs for about twice that price, depending on their design and age.
"The simplicity of Ming style, with clean lines and curves and with little elaboration is still the favorite, because it goes well with modern settings," Ang said, adding that customers are now combining classical and modern furniture, instead of spending on a whole classical living room or bedroom setup.
Ko Chin-han's (柯宸瀚) stock at Dragon Antique Gallery (天祥古董家俱) covers an even wider selection with average people's daily-use items such as children's bathtubs, rice buckets and lamp stands. Some designs are ingenious, like a stool that can be turned into a ladder and a laundry bucket. An antique dealer for 10 years, Ko travels to China three times a year to buy new pieces, looking mostly in the coastal provinces of Fujian (福建) and Zhejiang (
Dragon Antique also includes some high-end items, such as a Guifei chair (貴妃椅), a spacious two-seat chair for ladies with a small table in the middle, that runs about NT$90,000, and a neo-Baroque lady's chair from Shanghai, priced at about NT$30,000.
There is no concrete pricing system for antiques and authenticity is often difficult to determine, so without being an expert in the field, consumers are forced to trust the dealer's credibility and settle for a measure of uncertainty and their emotional attachment to the items they choose.
Sabrina Revel, a 28-year-old French Taipei resident, was thankful for the drop in antique prices. After hunting through several stores, she finally found a late 19th century altar table of walnut wood at an affordable price of NT$70,000. "I have heard of how expensive Chinese antique furniture can be, and I am glad it's getting affordable, because this is as much as I can offer."
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