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.

17. October 2022

-“Gee, honey look there’s a dragon in the sky!” -“Yay!” A classic example on how symbolism in marketing differs between the West and East-Asian countries. While in the culture of the former dragons are depicted as evil, in China they are traditionally seen as friendly and the bringers of good luck. A fact the historic Yutai flash light factory (裕泰电筒厂) from Shanghai cleverly used for its “Dragon head” brand (龙头牌).

10. October 2022

My Dear, or Měilì (美丽牌) meaning “beautiful” in Chinese, was the most popular Chinese cigarette brand out of Shanghai during Republican China. Since its inception it was famous for the attractive, confident and modern “new women” featured in its advertisements, ubiquitous across billboards, magazines and newspapers. Its Chinese slogan 有美皆备，无丽不臻 literally means “everyone wants the beauty because without beauty there is no completeness” but in more creative...

14. August 2022

A stunning illustration on this vintage box by the Chinese “Healthy” Pure Silk Hosiery brand (健美牌). The voyeuristic perspective and dramatic interaction of light and shadow is reminiscent of American realist painter Edward Hoppers art. Even more intriguingly though, the lady’s thin long eyebrows and her short hairstyle with romantic waves undoubtedly dates the image to the 1930s, while the low-key black and white setting in an inner-city apartment with Venetian blinds is much more...

22. July 2022

Probably our favorite panorama of Old Shanghai from our collection: an illustration from Harpers Weekly, September 12, 1900. Also an amazing reminder on how developed both the Bund on the Puxi side, as well as the Pudong side were already at that time. From a viewpoint most likely on top of the American Cigarette Company Co factory, on the Pudong side, we can see the building of the British Cigarette Company Ltd to the left (BAT was only established in 1902), on the right the Pootung Hotel, the...

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...

09. May 2022

11. October 2021

An edited and enhanced version of this article was published on Historic Shanghai. If you are based in Shanghai we highly recommend their historic walking tours.

13. September 2021

Sketch of a proposed "ricsha advertising plan for Shanghai", submitted to the Municipal Council by the National Advertising Agency in November 1927. After some back and forth with the Traffic Committee and the Secretary to Commissioner of Police, the Council did in fact grant permission to utilize the public ricsha and its puller for advertising purposes in February 1928! Whether it was ever implemented though we do not know - no photographic record has been found so far. Source: S.M.C....

24. August 2021

Pirate by British tobacco producer W.D. & H.O. Wills (later exclusively distributed by British American Tobacco), was one of the earliest Western cigarette brands to enter China in 1891. It was also one the most, if not the most well known foreign tobacco brands. Caricature Circles was a short live cartoon magazine published by Shanghai Cartoon Construction Publishing House under Wang Dunqing, as Editor-in-Chief The above cartoon is from the first edition. Only a total of 8 issues was ever...