From the Age When Traders Ruled the Seas
New shop owners have a rule of thumb: Open around Thanksgiving, and by Christmas you could reap 25 percent of the year's gross sales. Perhaps that's why four home stores chose this season to debut.
COLONIALISM is not a dirty word at Jamson Whyte, 47 Wooster Street (near Broome Street). John Erdos and Byron Jeong, the owners, specialize in carved teak furniture from Indonesia and India. There are plantation chairs, four-poster beds and armoires large enough to hold television sets.
A Chinese-style wedding bed (really more of a daybed), left, is 72 by 42 inches. It has an elaborately carved canopy, dates from the early 1900's and is $3,800.
So who is, or rather was, Jamson Whyte? He was a prominent 18th-century British trader who settled in Singapore, where Mr. Erdos and Mr. Jeong have second homes.
The tropical ambiance is also borrowed: Clodagh, the New Age interior designer, must have channeled an Indonesian spirit, painting walls a pale mustard and staining the cement floor bronze.
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