Luxury brand Duanmu combines natural materials with Chinese aesthetics to create exquisite handbags

Gu Mingxi, 26, from Beijing, works in finance. She works long hours and her job is stressful, so she rewards herself by spending almost half her annual salary on handbags from international luxury brands. Last week, she bought a wooden clutch from a local brand, which cost her as much as a Gucci leather handbag.

Duanmu, the Beijing-based brand is named after a Chinese compound surname listed in the Song Dynasty (960-1279) classic text, Hundred Family Surnames.

Its handbag was selected to be an alternative national gift for the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in 2017. In the same year, one of its blue ash burr veneer handbag with an inlaid floral motif was sold for 45,000 yuan ($6,698) through Christie's auction house in Shanghai.

Qi Tian, the founder of the brand, also suggests people understand the name of the brand as "decorous wood", based on the literal meaning of these two Chinese characters.