30. October 2023

Halloween Special! Here's how foreign brands and local businesses advertised for the celebration in Shanghai in October 1938. Clippings from an original North-China Daily News paper in the MOFBA collection.

04. June 2023

This ca. 1925 passbook for the provision store Dombey & Son from our collection, is the equivalent to the “order history” tab of modern ecommerce or grocery delivery apps. A unique glimpse at how advanced retail was in Shanghai already back then. Dombey & Son was a high-class grocery store established in 1899 and the location on 143 Bubbling Well Rd (today’s Nanjing West Rd) existed since at least 1909. As Shanghai grew into an international metropolis the address was renumbered...

25. August 2019

Since the opening of the Suez Canal in the mid-nineteenth century, China had been no more than a month away from the great southern French port of Marseille. The first Hennessy order arrived from China on December 28th, 1859. Nicquet Faroux & Schuwirth fulfilled it for 25 cases, each containing 12 bottles of Hennessy pale eaux-de-vie vintage 1857. The brands heyday in the Far East though was yet to come during the roaring 20s and dirty 30s of the following century...