'DARLING, IS THAT not wonderful? Look at that detail.' Hong Kong's grande dame of Asian antique collecting takes one of my hands in hers and leads me on a tour of the objets d'art in her office. Tuyet Nguyet is done up in a bouffant French twist and ao dai, a traditional Vietnamese outfit comprising a long red silk top and loose white silk trousers. She shows me antique silver necklaces from India, a rare oil painting of Mao Zedong, as well as some personal items. She is particularly proud of a photo of her, former US president George Bush and her son, Robin Markbreiter, now executive editor of Arts of Asia magazine, which she founded 34 years ago.
'People don't throw away our magazines because they keep them as reference books,' she says proudly. Nyuget has never been shy about promoting her publication. The thick, glossy magazine is considered the English-language authority on collectable Asian art, and is now used as a reference and teaching material at museums, auction houses and art school libraries around the world.
Looking at Nyuget today, living in her rarefied world of jade sculptures and 1,000-year-old Buddhist art, it's hard to image that she started her career as a war journalist. But Nguyet's love of the arts began when she was covering the Vietnam war for the English-language Saigon Daily News. She won't talk about details from that time, only that her brother was killed in the Tet offensive in 1968. To distract herself from the violence, she searched small local stores for jewellery, art pieces, artefacts or anything that had a bit of beauty.
'It was then that I realised what destruction really was, and how important is was to build back what was lost - not just buildings, but also art and culture,' she says. 'I thought if I could encourage Asian people and western people to have a cultural exchange through the arts, we would be able to bring peace.'
With the war still raging in her homeland, Nguyet moved to Hong Kong to work as a freelancer, writing for the South China Morning Post, Agence France-Presse, the Hong Kong Tiger Standard and the Far Eastern Economic Review. The idea of starting her own Hong Kong-based art magazine came in 1969, when she was pregnant with her fourth son, Robin. In 1970, she and her husband, Stephen Markbreiter, started working on their first issue - finding writers, taking photos, selling advertising and designing pages. 'You wouldn't imagine,' she says. 'It took one full year to prepare. The first issue didn't come out until January 1971. Many of our friends were very sure it was going to fail.'
Now 34 years into publication, Arts of Asia continues as a family-run company. Markbreiter still works as the associate editor and designs the covers, as he did for the first issue. Their son Robin, who was born at the same time as the magazine was founded, helps oversee the day-to-day operations. 'We trained him hard,' says the proud mother. 'He's off at the printing press now overseeing the next issue.' Nguyet herself is still very involved and can talk knowledgeably and at length about copy editing, fact checking, colour separations and paper quality.
But she also spends a lot of time overseas, promoting her unique brand of cultural exchange. She has just returned from the US, where she attended the International Asian Art Fair in New York, visited the Chinese house now on display at the Peabody Essex Museum outside Boston, and met curators from the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC.