All things old China - books, anecdotes, stories, podcasts, factoids & ramblings from the author Paul French
Out now Adam Brookes’s terrific Fragile Cargo. Here’s my Q&A with Adam for the China-Britain Business Council’s Focus magazine…click here…
The design team at the South China Morning Post Weekend Magazine always do such a great & original job with my long reads. Really fantastic, every time. This time a scandalous tale of passion, violence & death that rocked the Italian community of 1920s Beijing – click here
How things comes around….ten years ago I posted on the floor plan for the 1910 Nanyang Industrial Exposition – here. 2010 was the year of the Shanghai Expo, which got some excited but was a heritage and preservation disaster for the city as cadres took advantage of the hype and central government support to bulldoze vast swathes of the city, especially Yangpu (including much of the city’s neglected industrial architectural heritage), Tilanqiao (including a lot of the former Jewish ghetto) and Hongkou, (particularly key unique parts of the former Japanese Concession).
Anyway, a big thanks to a teacher from Nanjing Tech University who read the post and sent me some pictures of some remaining animal head sculptures that remain on the grounds of the Uni and probably (though someone out there may know better) orignally came from the USA.
Apparently they were marked as a Chinese mythical creatures. There also remains a cement parasol- covered rest/seating area (below too)…
Ornate silversmithing is a craft that once proliferated in Shanghai but has all but disappeared a long time past now. Perhaps the best known local silversmith of the late nineteenth/early twentieth century was Tuck Chang, sometimes referred to as the ‘Wang Hing of Shanghai’ (Wang Hing was a notable silversmith and antiques dealer in Canton/Guangzhou earlier on) and often marked “TC”. The firm was in operation from roughly 1890 to 1915. Though other silversmiths existed at the same time, such as Luen Wo, Yat Sen, Sing Fat (mostly run by Cantonese craftsman and merchants who had moved to Shanghai after learning the trade in Canton) and others, TC was the best known among the foreign community.
Tuck Chang employed a team of silversmiths catering mostly to the Shanghailander and tourist trade with silver trophies, tea sets and high quality gift items (such as the silver spoon and box pictured below). The company was Chinese but being based in Shanghai was very aware of European trends and tastes incorporating elements of the Beaux Arts, Arts and Crafts and Art Nouveau styles, though often combining these with Chinese traditional motifs – classic Shanghai hai-pai brought to silversmithing.
Some examples of Tuck Chang’s work below (the internet will yield many dozens of examples)…
(there are two other posts on Shanghai silversmiths that may interest readers – on Zeewo here and on Luen Wo here)
Chinese toilet box embossed with chrysanthemums, foliage & an insect – Tuck Chang – c.1900
For over 50 years from the late 1890s there was a Kowloon Hotel on Hankow Road in Hong Kong. More surprising to find a Kowloon Hotel on Harold Road, Cliftonville, Margate in Kent in the 1920s and 1930s. Managed by a CF Grandy, who I can only assume was returned from Hong Kong and thought he’d name his new establishment after a Hong Kong icon of the time…though I can find no trace of a CF Grandy in Hong Kong at any point. I can’t find a house number for the property on Harold Road but any Margate people care to wander along the street and speculate i’d love to locate it more precisely?
An interview with Paul Bevan, Anne Witchard, and Da Zheng on Chiang Yee and His Circle: Chinese Artistic and Intellectual Life in Britain, 1930–1950. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2022. Click here.
An oil on canvas of Chinese junks at Shanghai from 1913 by Arnesen…
Vilhelm Karl Ferdinand Arnesen was born in Flensburg in 1865. The son of Captain Georg Arnesen, he was introduced to marine subject matter at an early age. His father built model ships and introduced young Vilhelm to the rigging and construction of ships. He received his formal training at the Danish Academy in Copenhagen from 1882-1888. He exhibited for the first time in 1885 with the Decembristerne, and then the Charlottenborg’s spring and autumn exhibitions. While attending the Academy he was given the honour of accompanying the Danish Royal family on their travels abroad. Arnesen himself made numerous sea voyages over his life time, traveling extensively throughout Europe, the United Kingdom, and East Asia. He quickly became a renowned marine painter and received many medals from the Danish Royal Academy. He also exhibited at the World Expo in Chicago in 1893. Vilhelm Arnesen’s paintings are exhibited today in museums in Copenhagen and Aalborg, Denmark. He died in 1948 in Copenhagen.
Here’s one more Arnesen…Junks at Sea (date unknown)….
Excellent news that a grant from will mean that Isamu Noguchi’s live-work space, located across the street from his namesake museum in New York City, will undergo much-needed renovations to become accessible for public tours. More details here from The Art Newspaper.
And a good chance for me to note that back in 2013 i spent some time at the museum as part of their then exhibition “Beijing 1930” that looked at the six months or so Noguchi spent in Beijing in 1930 and his collaborations with the Chinese artist/calligrapher Qi Baishi. I spoke at the museum on the milieu of Peking in 1930 and the international circle of acquaintances Noguchi made while in the city. That essay by the way is included as part of my book Destination Peking (Blacksmith Books)…
And, while the Beijing 1930 exhibition is finished, the catalogue remains (here) and is a good read with a lot of the art from Noguchi’s Peking sojourn.
