WORD PLAY

FURNITURE 

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In fact, components and radicals of Chinese character are developed based on the four logics of character creation including shape, meaning, association and shape-sound combination. However, not all components are radicals. For instance, in Shuowenjiezi, a Chinese dictionary, the ideographic part of a Chinese character is usually regarded as the radical which falls into two categories- radical for recognition and radical for retrieval. And radical for recognition is the most peculiar component of Chinese characters.

 

Radical for recognition, which is widely-used, plays a significant role in character creation. Hundreds of characters can be created with one radical for recognition and some other components. Actually, the structure of characters created in this way is more like a modular design to some degree. Finally, we find a brand-new perspective to apply Chinese characters in furniture design by following this logic.

 

Based on this, we find a radical for recognition- “门” (which refers to “door” in English). Dozens of new characters are created after different characters are put inside this radical. Thanks to this inspiration, our character game furniture series is born.