Meet the world’s leading Ming furniture collector – whose piece a British royal once couldn’t afford

“It’s years since I’ve done a face-to-face interview,” says Grace Wu Ka-yan. “We’ll just have a casual conversation.” If there’s the touch of a regal edict in the statement, it’s understandable: as the world’s leading expert and collector of Ming furniture, Wu is often referred to, at least in press releases, as the Queen of Huanghuali – that being the yellow flowering pear wood from which most of it is made.

In this role, she is holding court, a little reluctantly, with two amiable communications staff from Christie’s, amid the space-age curves of The Henderson in Central, Hong Kong. The enjoyable contrast between its beer-can/grain-silo architecture (by the studio of the late Zaha Hadid, and honouring her larger-than-life audaciousness) and the demure elegance of Ming furniture, as exemplified by the slender, white-clad Wu, feels like a cultural tickle.

As it is the auction house’s first week in its new Asia-Pacific headquarters, the luxe air is thrumming, both with expectation and Super Typhoon Yagi, which is off the coast and due to shut down the city in a couple of hours. Officially, the interiors are still so secret that no South China Morning Post photographer is to be admitted; in any case, Wu’s exhibition of pieces from her MQJ Collection hasn’t been set up yet; and the book she is also launching, Three Decades of Ming Furniture, is still at the printer and no proof copy seems to be available; so here we are, casually conversing. When details look as if they might interfere with the flow, she says, “Et cetera, et cetera” and all is well.

“Seven years ago, I did a huge exhibition with Sotheby’s,” she says. You might expect a sharp intake of breath by the Christie’s staff at mention of the opposition, but no. In 2017, when that Wu exhibition, majestically titled “The Best of the Best”, was held at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, Kevin Ching Sau-hong was CEO of Sotheby’s Asia. Last year, Christie’s appointed him chairman, Asia. For Wu, it’s a slight swerve, not a defection.

“That exhibition was huge – 100 pieces! – and amazing and I loved it and everybody else loved it,” she says. “It was something very close to my heart. I like to show this furniture. I like people to see it – I like to see it myself!” This time round, however, it is “close to” 30 pieces. “I’d like to show it in its entirety but it’s not going to be possible because the world has changed so much, people’s priorities changed, et cetera, et cetera. My own assessment of my role in their lives has also changed.”

Wu studied psychology at McGill University, in Montreal, Canada, so perhaps she might like to analyse this observation. After a pause, she says, “From the beginning, people like to talk to you about collectors. Now … it’s a whole different way to approach so-called collections and … appreciation … and the relationship with objects and people.” She says, again, “The world has changed so much, there’s war – it’s almost like a luxury that we’re talking about these things.”