Vintage Furniture, vintage Cafe, Cafe, Art and Art Life Aesthetic Society

Stella from the first group of guests to become a staff member, the boss couple because too busy and low-key did not even show up for a photo, for the interview, this is a difficult thing. Stella even wishes she didn't show up too much, discussing the significance of the cafe's existence. However, it is in this dialogue that I see the unique aesthetics of life in this cafe filled with small animals, flowers and vintage old things.

old villa

Close to nature in southern France

Stella, who is in charge of brand and external publicity, apologized before she started the first interview in the small garden. There was a WeChat message that she needed to reply urgently: "Wang Jiawei's crew is looking for us to make up a scene." Seduction and charm were indeed keywords that Wang Jiawei would choose for his movies, but they were also a little more Southern French than the cold tone.

At the end of 2007, the boss and his wife Dangdang and Sam came back from abroad and found that the state of the whole Shanghai was very different from when they left. People's hearts became impetuous, ignoring the essence of some slow life, and they were quickly pursuing things of interest. The original intention of the small garden is to create a safe haven for yourself, which is the studio of the designer boss. So she put all her favorite elements, which is not without small animals, flowers and vintage old furniture.

Dangdang has lived abroad for many years, and has its own set of taste in design. Chinese hanging paintings like symmetry, the same size, small garden wall on the kind of heteromorphic mosaic painting is when the introduction of relatively early. Lift tablecloth, eagle claw table corner, retained use trace all show precious in detail. The most eye-catching thing in the first floor space is a three-seat sofa.

"Many people think it's too short and soft, but it's actually shipped directly from European castles," Stella said."The beds and quilts in old European movies are soft. There were no springs or sponges at that time, and the softest thing was velvet." Even the carving on the back of the sofa was exquisite. It could be seen that it was carved from a piece of wood, not a combination. The tree is so long, the tree has thickness, to intercept a uniform section, complete the carving from the highest point to the lowest point, materials, labor are not simple. With chandeliers, dining tables, the entire French court style route. Once a customer offered an exciting price to buy, but the reason for not selling was that the proprietress thought that creating a shop was like making a painting, and each display had its own position, jumping out of the picture from imagination.

Eight years ago, after returning to China, the couple walked past this private old house on Kangping Road, and they were tempted to make their own studio, and the things they had unintentionally collected also had a place to put them. The rich landlady still lives upstairs and witnesses the coming and going of the café.

coffee

Decorations, not gestures.

After the hardware is ready, I want to ask for a simple coffee and a delicious meal. As the crowd grew larger, customers 'fondness for this style gradually turned them into friends, and the must-have mode of drinking and eating snacks prompted the small garden to officially turn into an external cafe. The couple couldn't make coffee, so they hired a teacher who knew coffee and utensils very well from a Taiwanese coffee company to be the manager.

At this point, we can see that under the trend of starting businesses and opening stores in the streets, the positioning of cafes is also different. There are visual cafes with flower champions. It is more important to take photos and punch cards. There are old Jianghu who pay attention to coffee machines and baked beans. They only do "professional party". What is a small garden? Some media have commented that it is not a pure coffee shop, the reason is not to take the fine coffee route. Perhaps Little Garden was more concerned about something else than the pressure value of the coffee machine, the number of extraction seconds, and the origin of the coffee beans. As it evolved from entertaining friends, it was more like a secret base between friends, providing a place to rest only for a shared afternoon in each other's lives.

Stella also knows that if you use boutique coffee to ask for a small garden, she also knows that it is not: "We have always passed on a slow life of discovering ourselves, not forgetting the initial heart, to have life aesthetics, life attitude." Coffee is not a luxury in our eyes, it is a necessity in life, just like an egg cooked by your mother, will you tell her that it is not a fine egg? (After all, there are also very expensive Blue Emperor eggs now.) Coffee is everyday, and I don't want to overcorrect it."

Therefore, coffee and old houses, flowers, small animals, is embellishment, not posture, together constitute the southern French natural style with sunshine flavor, like those old furniture, each has its own "responsibility."

Music is carefully selected, divided into lunch, afternoon tea, dinner time suitable for listening to what; flowers are purchased according to each season, several times a week to ensure freshness. It was all like a creative feeling."It's like going to buy vegetables. Maybe I thought about what kind of vegetables I want to eat today. After I went there, the auntie selling vegetables told you that this dish was very fresh, so I bought it." The interview was in mid-December in Shanghai. The seasonal love grass, small leaf eucalyptus, small daisy and delphinium flower arrangement were fresh and eye-catching. Stella went shopping once. She had to drive a big car and run to many suppliers to buy them all.

When it's sunny, the landlady likes to sit in the courtyard and play with her beloved rabbits and cats. Old Mac used to be a guest here, sitting here drawing his sketches for the opening of Old Mac's Cafe. The name card of the small garden is printed with the courtyard scenery hand-painted by Dangdang himself. After many years, you find that it has not changed.

Cafe people

My lucky little one.

Stella was one of the first regular customers of Little Garden. She was shy when she visited and did not communicate much with the boss. Later, as a coffee lover, she went to many other shops without knowing that it was actually from the same boss. In 2007, juice bars and cafés were few and far between. At that time, from the perspective of a guest, I felt that this was a very attentive shop, the environment was beautiful, and the things belonged to simple reality.

"I was originally doing consultancy and consulting work. This is a team that does not aim at profit, and they are also afraid to find a utilitarian person to change their initial intentions. Before me, there were no female staff, not that they couldn't recruit people, but that they wanted to recruit people with the same ideas. For example, how to arrange this painting, how to insert this flower, what kind of flower is appropriate to put in front of this red velvet. Everyone may have found that their world view and understanding of beauty are the same, so they said whether to join the team."

From Stella's point of view, I saw the lives of others who were really spread out in front of me: there were guests who met, fell in love, proposed, engaged, had children and brought their children to report to them; a couple who had been married for many years asked for "Happy 10th Anniversary" in the title when issuing invoices; a guest knocked you and said he came to eat salad after working out, and he sat down and the waiter knew what he wanted. Stories about trust, about belonging, are always better suited to coffee shops.

question and answer

Q= Life Weekly A=Stella

Q: Why go to a cafe?

A: You can make a good cup of coffee at home, whether it's hand-brewed, smart cup or coffee machine. I have it myself. I buy a lot at home. Why are we going to a cafe? The charm of every cafe is the people in it. When you go to a shop, it is the people in the shop that make the shop present its style. You may be at home by landline, children, their identity and other labels, you may be xxx's wife, subordinates, mother, forget who you are. I hope you get to the cafe, put these things down, and you're yourself.

Q: Do you have similar interests with small gardens and are you also a person who loves slow life?

A: Yes. Some time ago, I just dug up a chef from the best restaurant in new Zealand. He was also wonderful. He went to new Zealand in his sophomore year to study all the way. He was a top student in finance and finally became a cook. We come together with like-minded people.

Q: What cafe do you recommend?

A: They also go to other homes, each with a different look. There's nothing special about coffee shops. They're just ways of life. The ones I visit most often are my own series. The Little Garden series now has 6 restaurants, 2 antique shops, 1 complex novel restaurant (collection of antique retail + coffee simple meal), Kangping Road this cafe is the earliest.

Source: Life Weekly