12. September 2023
This 1930s postcard from our collection reminds us of the lost profession of billboard painter, signwriter or “wall dogs” as its practitioners were often colloquially called. Commercial advertising has a long history in China and in the West but as an industry only emerged several centuries after the invention of Woodblock printing in China in the 9th century, and of the printing press by Gutenberg in around 1436. These technologies eventually allowed for the mass production of flyers,...
12. June 2023
This rare 1927 Palmolive poster from our collection, not only stems from a very short-lived period of the brand, but was also designed by the most prolific commercial artist of Republican China. Follow along for a deep-dive into this golden age of Chinese advertising.
23. January 2023
Happy Chinese New Year! This rare A.S. Watsons advertisement from our collection not only has a peculiar design around the auspicious character 康 (health), but tells the origin story and evolution of the famous Chinese calendar posters which were in fact pioneered by Watsons in the 1880s together with a second British firm.
27. June 2022
A 1930s Agfa Film Wallet in art-deco design by Mackenzie Sports Co. Shanghai. Mackenzie Sports was a mid-1930s sports store in Shanghai, offering a wide range of sports equipment such as for tennis and boxing, and seemingly also offered photo development services. The shop was owned by R. Nymphius, an active tennis player in the local leagues of the time himself.
20. June 2022
A beautiful (and unopened!) art-deco design tea tin of "Selected Tea" by the Sincere Co. Shanghai. Sincere was the first Chinese-owned department store in Shanghai, opened in 1917. It was also the first of the "4 Big Department Stores" of Old Shanghai, followed by the Wing-On, the Sun Sun and the Sun. The relentless competition between them spurred modern retail innovations throughout the 1920s, 30s and 40s, such as in this case consumer packaged goods under "Sincere's" own private label brand...
21. March 2022
Beijing-based art collector Tong Bingxue today voiced his concerns on Twitter over the authenticity of a piece currently on auction at Sotheby's. We love ourselves a good old China mystery (especially when it possibly is around false advertising) and were quickly able to not only confirm suspicions over the provenance of "the earliest known dated photograph by a Chinese photographer" but uncover a shocking lack of research and fact-checking across reputable auction houses such as Christie's,...
20. February 2022
Not advertising related, but this has to be one of the most bizarre Old Shanghai tales we’ve come across. Here is what went down on March 7th 1936… Lu Fuzhi (陆敷之), the president of the 'Shanghai Commercial Fraternal Joint Trade Union', on this 40th birthday, took his 'wife' Yang Xiaoe taking off in a hot air balloon - made in France – apparently from the eastern side of Mogan Mountain, expected to arrive in Huzhou before sunset. However, the couple never arrived in Huzhou that...
16. May 2021
Designed by Austro-Hungarian architect C.H. Gonda and inaugurated in February 1926, it was lauded as Gonda’s “triumph in style of architecture new to Shanghai.” BEA was founded in Hong Kong in 1918 with the idea to blend East and West, essentially by embracing the style of a Chinese, family-run bank but also adopting modern accounting and banking methods. Already in 1920, BEA opened its first branches in Shanghai and Ho Chi Minh City. Today it remains the largest independent local Hong...
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