05. March 2023
Do Chinese people eat cornflakes for breakfast? It turns out, it is as difficult to chew on this question today, as it was in the 1920s. Discover the century-long struggle of Kellogg's in cracking the Chinese market and where the company and its former partners stand today.
18. December 2022
The earliest form of football has actually been recognized by FIFA as the Chinese game of Cuju or Tsu' Chu (蹴鞠), dating back to the 3rd century BC. A competitive form of Cuju was already used then as fitness training for soldiers, while other forms were played for entertainment.
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...
03. August 2022
Pinhead was the first US American cigarette brand introduced in China. Its manufacturer was W. Duke, Sons & Co founded in 1871 by Washington Duke in Durham, North Carolina. As early as June 1882 W. Duke and Sons sent their salesman Richard H. Wright on a nineteen-month tour around the world to place their company’s tobacco in key export centers and its products may have already reached China by then.
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...
22. May 2022
The brand by British manufacturer W.D. & H.O. Wills was one of the first machine-made Western cigarettes introduced to the Chinese market in the late 20th century. When British American Tobacco (BAT) was formed in 1902 it took over all the assets and brand rights for China from Wills and would turn Ruby Queen into one of the most recognized and successful tobacco brands in the first Republic of China. At one point in the 1920s Ruby Queen would even become the second most popular cigarette...
21. March 2022
Various posters, postcards and product packaging from the MOFBA collection. Girl in pink Qipao is actress Liang Saishan 梁赛珊.
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