The Sea Captain’s Shop, Shanghai 1934

Posted: January 30th, 2024 | No Comments »

The Sea Captain’s Shop was a very well-known store in 1930s Shanghai run by local celebrity Mrs W Tornroth (a celeb as she was always in the Shanghai paper social columns). This advert from December 1934.

The store was known for its amazing interior decor and range of luxury Chinese made goods (silk etc) for men and women mixed in with various curios and Chinese objets. The store’s location, adjacent to the Cathay Hotel in the Central Arcade alongside other antique stores and useful locations such as American Express and Thomas Cook. Tornroth specialised in selling to the sojourners arriving by ship and staying at the Cathay and Palace – prices were high, but good by US and European standards.

The shop, by the way, was named in honour of Mrs Tornroth’s husband, Captain W Tornroth, a US Naval Commander (around the time of World War One) who had also commanded one of the Yangtze Rapids ships for several years. Tornroth and his wife were lifelong collectors of Chinese antiques and curios. The Tornroth’s were interned in WW2 and repatriated from Shanghai on the Gripsholm.

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