(Photo: UnBeige)

Earlier this week, the New York branch of Sotheby's hosted "Creative Hong Kong," an exhibit organized by the Hong Kong Design Centre and highlighted by ten unique products born from collaborations between global brands and Hong Kong designers. Among the works on view were Eric Chan's ergonomically sound bamboo chair for Herman Miller and "Flora Banquet," a set of Royal Copenhagen dinnerware tailored for Chinese cuisine with graphic designer Kan Tai Keung's Chinese brushwork-influenced hybrid of painting and calligraphy. "Hong Kong design is characterized by its international perspective...the meeting of Eastern culture with Western culture," said Lorraine Justice, director of the School of Design at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, at Monday's press briefing.

The opposites really attracted in architect and designer Chi-Wing Lo's "Stringless Pleasure" mini-stereo system for KEF (pictured above), which you'll recall as the British company that partnered with Ross Lovegrove on those lovely Muon speakers. Made of shimmering antique wood accented with jade buttons and dials, the sleek stereo fuses craftsmanship and innovation, east and west, natural and synthetic—and that, and shelf space (a clever way to ensure optimal spacing between wall and speaker)! "I think of it as the mussing link between a musical instrument and a contemporary hi-fi system," Lo told us. He further described his concept, designed to celebrate last year's tenth anniversary of the British handover of Hong Kong to China, as "Hong Hong and China, bridged by sound." Click "continued..." for a closer look.