Hi everyone, I’m Antares, creative director of Sun at Six. Though we started Sun at Six in Cali/NYC in 2017, I originally learned furniture from my mom, who learned traditional Chinese joinery from a master in Beijing over 30 years ago. After learning the trade, she began with faithful Ming era work in line with what her master taught. Since then, she’s worked to bring attention to classical joinery techniques from China, specifically from the Ming dynasty era.

What began as a tiny workshop in her hometown slowly expanded: new customers, forging her own hardware, purchasing our own kilns, expanding the space, koi ponds for aesthetics, adding radiant heating, experimenting with leather and fabric, re-engineering the joinery system for use across extreme climates, adding skylights for natural light, certificates of sustainability, inventing new tools for joinery work, adding a new wood drying annex.

We’ve now had our work featured in the Forbidden City, the historic ancient and former imperial palace in Beijing, and done work for the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, teaching traditional joinery and authenticating traditional work. We’ve come a long way since those humble beginnings, but some things stay the same: all our work is done in-house, and many of the Chinese joinery masters we work with are still with us, decades later, many of whom I’ve known since I was a kid.

We’re excited to share this history and artistry with others. We hope that people here can celebrate the incredible history of craft that exists in China, and fight the old Made in China stereotypes. The joinery techniques we use, for example, are the inspiration for the better-known Japanese joinery techniques celebrated throughout the West. We think it’s particularly important for us as Chinese-Americans to shine a light on individual human stories and experiences across borders that remind us of our common humanity: all of us, from Greensboro to Guangzhou, are just trying find a path and make it in this world.

Anyways, thank you for stopping by, take a look, and we hope you enjoy!

Antares Yee, by Sean Davidson for Elle Decor

Our furniture is designed with the idea that spaces influence and define how we relate to others. Sitting across from a friend at a narrow table, faces inches apart, can encourage an intimate, charged dynamic, while reclining seats encourage us to sink back and break off from the conversation to relax. Furniture, and how it's designed, plays a role in shaping these relationships and interpersonal dynamics. More than pragmatic objects, furniture and their arrangement can bring people together and nourish relationships that matter to us.

We aim to create spaces that are simple, gentle, restorative, nourishing, open, and natural.