Your authentic one-stop shop for horrifically-priced but genuinely antique tansu (Japanese cabinetry). In the front you walk past the workers restoring the pieces and preparing them for sale.
Tansu are their own art genre. They have a utility (holding your clothes) but their craftsmanship has its own set of values- generally, there are no "structural" nails in a tansu; all the wood is held together with elaborate joins. The decorative metal plates are hand-worked and affixed with tiny metal nails.
Zentner also has other pieces, like the little household shrines you put in a Japanese house, or the many-drawered Chinese apothecary cabinets used in Chinese medicine.
Sometimes I go to Zentner and browse their stock. From looking at the examples, their source and date of manufacture, I can see the difference between Japanese tansu and similar Chinese and Korean pieces. At this point I can fairly accurately determine the date (within 50 years) and nation of manufacture. Someday this will be useful, I"m sure.
The warehouse is huge and open to the public; it's like going to a free museum. And it's not just me- I actually saw an exhibit of some of Zentner's stock at an art gallery in Palo Alto (the Palo Alto Art Center).
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