26. April 2025

Novartis is one of world’s largest pharma corporations and was formed in 1996 by the merger of Ciba-Geigy & Sandoz – originally three independent businesses all from the same small town of Basel, which is strategically located in Switzerland on the border to France and Germany. The surprisingly progressive 1929 calendar poster advertisement from our collection was produced for the most successful of these companies in China…

08. November 2023

If you look closely you will discover, that not only do we have this very rare 1930s Chinese Lever Brothers advertisement in our collection, but also an original matching soap bar, just as depicted on the poster. The company was once the largest soap producer in China and its traces remain visible in the country to this day. We have retold its 150-year long history, internationally and in the Middle Kingdom specifically across multiple posts in the past: Lever's Health Soap still sold here The...

19. October 2023

For more on the history of Sun-Maid Raisins in China please visit our previous blog post here.

13. October 2023

This 1946 Shanghai magazine ad for Eng Aun Tong features a puzzling key visual - we certainly don't recommend using Tiger Balm as a sunscreen... The well-known heat rub was created in the 1870s by a Chinese herbalist in Burma. His sons took over the company in 1908 and developed it into a highly successful business empire which exported to China, Japan, and across Southeast Asia. In 1920 the headquarter was moved to Singapore where it continues to be manufactured to this day.

31. July 2023

08. July 2023

This intriguing 1928 calendar poster, advertising the „Beacon” cigarette brand, was not only created by the most versatile Chinese commercial artist of the 20th century, but also leads us to explore the story of the first and largest foreign-founded tobacco manufacturer in China.

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.

27. February 2023

This beautiful mid-1920s Art Deco style advertisement sign for Allenburys tells the astonishing story of the once wealthiest foreign family of Old Shanghai. They were highly esteemed, with numerous schools, two streets, an office building, and even a coffee house named after them. Yet, their name has almost been forgotten, if it weren’t for the rare artefacts that sometimes still show up in the antique markets and the few remnants of their legacy strewn across the vanishing old city.

07. November 2022

In November 2022 the Chinese government issued new regulations for celebrity related advertising. Among others the updated rules prohibit celebrity endorsements of medicines, off-campus education and – finally - tobacco. What sounds fairly reasonable for today’s standards actually took the authorities over a century to crack down on: the practice of Chinese singers and movie stars unscrupulously peddling cigarettes goes back to the early 20th century and, as we will see, sometimes even with...

24. October 2022

In 1848 John B. Curtis from Maine developed the first commercial chewing gum, inspired by American Indians who chewed resin made from the sap of spruce trees. The product innovation soon became popular across the USA and beyond. Already in 1890, we find a first mention of chewing gum being available for Christmas season in the International Settlement of Shanghai from American trading firm Mustard & Co. But it took another 20 years before mass-marketing to a wider Chinese audience would...