Our horseshoe armchair stars in an advert with Mr Bean



We were happy to help when Pinewood Studios got in touch a few months ago to request some furniture for an advert they were filming. Imagine how thrilled we were to learn that the advert starred the one and only Mr Bean, in a return to the small screen for Snickers!

Pinewood borrowed a number of items, and most visible in the video is the horseshoe chair which you can see on the left at the start. Luckily, the expensive looking vase which Rowan Atkinson breaks towards the end is not one of ours!

As Shimu is one of the leading specialists in handcrafted Chinese furniture and antiques in the UK, it’s not uncommon for us to be asked to lend furniture for film and TV.

Our last big screen outing was in the recent Keanu Reeves film 47 Ronin, for which we supplied 25 red lacquer folding stools which were used in one of the crucial scenes of the film (read more and take a look at one of the stools in a previous post).

Before that, we worked with the production team for Skyfall – the James Bond film with Daniel Craig set partly in Shanghai – to provide a wooden towel rail, several antique stools and reproduction tables, brass hardware to accessorise a number of window panels and most importantly, dozens of wire and canvas lanterns in all shapes and sizes. If you’ve watched the film, you’re bound to recognise them, as they feature in a pivotal scene and make a huge dramatic impact. You can read more about our involvement with Skyfall in this earlier post. We absolutely love working with production companies and theatres and are always happy to lend our expertise or our stock. We’re still waiting for our red carpet invitation to a star-studded New York premiere though! Fingers crossed it’s next time lucky….

 Anyway, you can check out the full range of accessories, antiques and handcrafted furniture, including that very famous horseshoe chair, at our website.