The Unexpected Joy of Buying Direct from China: A Collector’s Confession Let me tell you about the day my carefully curated minimalist aesthetic came crashing down. There I was, sipping my third oat milk latte in my impeccably neutral Berlin apartment, scrolling through design blogs, when I saw it: a hand-carved wooden side table from a small workshop in Fujian. The lines were perfect. The grain whispered stories. And the price? One-fifth of what a similar piece would cost from a Scandinavian designer. My inner purist screamed “No!” while my wallet whispered “But imagine…” That moment of conflict—between my collector’s desire for authenticity and my practical side—started my journey into…