The Pantone Room designed by Joyce Wang for our Spring 2021 sale in Hong Kong.
In 2019, Phillips unveiled a groundbreaking concept at our Hong Kong auctions: the Pantone Room, a custom-designed space displaying a curated selection of fine art, functional furniture and conceptual works from our 20th Century & Contemporary Art & Design Day Sale.
This intimate showroom, on view during our Hong Kong previews, aims to demonstrate how fine art and contemporary design can coexist in the home, giving visitors an immersive experience that a gallery alone cannot provide.
An award-winning designer is invited every season to conceive the space, painted in a Pantone color of his or her choice. The designer also gets to choose which pieces to display from our Day Sale, offering visitors a chance to envision themselves living with the art.
“The dialogue between the pieces creates an added dimension that begs the viewer to question more than if they were appreciating the pieces singularly.”
“The dialogue between the pieces creates an added dimension that begs the viewer to question more than if they were appreciating the pieces singularly,” says Joyce Wang, who designed the Spring 2021 Pantone Room.
Wang’s Pantone Room included alcoves to display furniture alongside paintings.
Since we started the project, our design selection has achieved a 100% sell-through rate in Hong Kong. Past collaborators include Alan Chan, who famously designed album covers for Cantopop legends Leslie Cheung and Anita Mui, and Li Naihan, an architect-turned-furniture-designer whose previous work includes collaborations with artist Ai Weiwei.
As we gear up for the fall auction season—and prepare to announce our next Pantone Room designer—here is a look back at our past projects.
Spring 2019: Pantone 561C by Alfred Lam
Phillips partnered with Hong Kong-based interior designer Alfred Lam for the inaugural Pantone Room. He selected Pantone 561C, a calming shade of forest green.
Lam is the founder of Studio 1618 and the brainchild behind some of Hong Kong’s most sophisticated residential and retail spaces. His Pantone Room included a wide selection of works on papers from our Spring 2019 Day Sale, set against a naturalistic interior accentuated by potted plants.
Fall 2019: Pantone 405C by Robert Cheng
For the second iteration, Phillips partnered with Hong Kong and Singapore-based architect and designer Robert Cheng. He chose Pantone 405C, an elegant gray that exemplifies his unique brand of upscale sophistication.
Cheng is the principal at Brewin Design Office, an award-winning architecture and interior design firm that specializes in elegant, bespoke design for residential, hospitality and cultural spaces in the Asia-Pacific region.
For the Pantone Room, he drew on the gallery space’s unique proportions, employing mirrors to emphasize the room’s length and convey its pure form and symmetry.
Spring 2020: Pantone 159U by Li Naihan
Chinese designer Li Naihan curated the third Pantone Room, which for the first time comprised furniture from a single-owner collection—Eternal Form: A Century of Modern and Contemporary Design—from Hong Kong collector Kai-Yin Lo. The room showcased a wide range of Scandinavian and Asian design, set against a lively orange backdrop.
A graduate of the Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London, Li is a pioneering designer and architect. Since returning to China in 2004, she has focused on art installations and limited-edition furniture pieces that explore the intersection of architecture and various fields. Her work has been shown at the Venice Architecture Biennale, Milan Design Triennale and London Design Museum.
Fall 2020: Pantone 7603C by Alan Chan
An award-winning designer, brand consultant and artist, Hong Kong-based Alan Chan was selected to design Phillips’ fourth Pantone Room. He chose 7603C and based his design off the layered landscapes of Suzhou’s famous gardens.
Watch: Alan Chan on the challenges of designing the Pantone Room
Chan is the first Hong Kong designer ever to be invited to hold a solo exhibition at the Shanghai Art Museum in 2007 and the prestigious Ginza Graphic Gallery in Tokyo in 2002. His works have been collected by art institutions and private collectors worldwide.
Spring 2021: Pantone 5015C by Joyce Wang
Joyce Wang, an award-winning interior designer and founder of Joyce Wang Studio, gained her reputation in luxury hospitality and residential design. Her industry accolades include Hospitality Design magazine’s coveted Designer of the Year Award in 2020, Design Anthology’s inaugural Vanguard award in 2019 and being listed among the top 400 in Dezeen’s Designer Hot List.
For our fifth Pantone Room, Wang chose 5015C, a sulking pink color that bathes the art pieces in homey warmth. To mimic the moldings found in classical homes, Wang created living vignettes where visitors can experience micro-curations of furniture and fine art pieces.
“For me, art and design objects have to be given a home to be fully appreciated,” Wang says. “The walls dividing the vignettes wind sinuously through the gallery, creating alcoves such that pieces are presented to the viewer as scenes unfolding in a journey—from the foyer to the dining room to the study, through the privacy of the home.”
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