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…

25. December 2024

A charming candy tin from our collection, with a Santa Claus illustration by the Ysien Dah Co. from Shanghai, China. Ca. 1920s.

28. March 2024

Robin Hood, the legendary outlaw from English folklore, famously stole from the rich to give to the poor. This 1940s hand fan advertisement for cigarettes named after the swashbuckling hero is from our collection and shows that the iconic character even stole the hearts and minds of audiences in faraway China.

01. December 2023

This advertising poster from our collection tells of an incredible streak of bad luck for the German pharma giant Bayer during a both glamorous and troublesome period of history in the Middle Kingdom.

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.

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.

25. December 2022

05. December 2022

The crumb trail of Bakerite leads us back to the American James David Sullivan, who after serving in the Spanish American War, came to China at the turn of the century and established the Denniston & Sullivan photo supplies store on Broadway (today’s Daming Rd.) in the Shanghai International Settlement. In June 1906 Sullivan sold the business to former employees Messrs. L.L. Hopkins and J.J. Gilmore who continued to operate it but moved it to Nanking Rd. (todays Nanjing East Rd.)

28. October 2022

This large 1932 map of Shanghai was produced by Millington Inc., one of the “Big 4” advertising agencies of old Shanghai. It was issued in the same year when Millington also started to produce the monthly “The Cathay” hotel magazine and features almost the same advertisers. The map was a supplement to the “City Directory of Shanghai”, a publication issued by Millington and which complemented the “Rosenstock’s Business Directory of China” which the agency also produced annually...

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...