Researching my family history, and understanding where, and how my ancestors lived, is infinitely fascinating, since the world they knew is so far removed from anything that any of us could imagine in the 21st century.
My grandmother was the firstborn child of a Straits-Chinese family living in Southeast Asia in the late 1800s. Originally from the city of Pelambang, in southern Sumatra, sometime shortly after the turn of the last century, my great-grandparents packed their bags, and decided that the Dutch East Indies was not the place to raise a family. Instead, they moved from Sumatra, across the Strait of Malacca, to Singapore, which was then part of a collection of British colonies known as the Straits Settlements (hence “Straits Chinese”).
Here, they lived with my great-grandmother’s sister, slowly raising a family, and giving birth to – eventually – four girls, and a boy.
Singapore in the early 1900s was, by all measures, a recognisably modern city. It was the capital of the Straits Settlements, and featured all the trappings of such a position, such as schools, hospitals, public transport systems, and of course, a police force.
The Singapore Police Force – or as it was back then – the Straits Settlements Police – was unique among police forces in Asia. Established in 1820, just a year after Singapore’s official founding, the Straits Police was – and is – the oldest operational professional police-force in the whole of Asia. It was established so soon after Singapore’s establishment as a free-trading port that it beat the creation of the London Metropolitan Police by a whole nine years!
The Early Straits Police Force
The early Straits Police Force had extremely humble beginnings, with a full complement of just eleven men to act as clerical-staff, patrol-officers, sergeants and police-inspectors. The first police chief was Francis James Bernard, son-in-law of Singapore’s first governor, William Farquhar. While Farquhar had some military experience (he held the rank of Major-General), Bernard had no such army training, and no policing experience of any kind whatsoever! He was a newspaper-editor!
Singapore’s multicultural nature meant that the police force was soon made up of officers from each of Singapore’s main ethnic groups, such as Indians, Malays, Indonesians, Chinese, and also British expatriates. This racial diversity was necessary for the police-force to operate, because up to half a dozen languages or more, were spoken within the colony!
The Straits Settlements Central Police Station, South Beach Road, Singapore.
In the 1860s, the police finally got their first real, proper headquarters, when grand new premises were constructed on South Beach Road in central Singapore. These remained in operation until the 1930s and 40s, until the buildings were vacated for more modern premises after WWII. The original headquarters buildings were demolished in 1978.
In the late 1800s, police uniforms were standardised with a khaki cotton tunic, shorts, puttees, boots, a cap with a police badge on it, and an equipment-belt. This would remain more or less unchanged right up until the 1950s, with only minor alterations.
Straits Settlements Police Whistle
By the time my ancestors had started living in Singapore, around the turn of the 20th century, the Straits Settlements Police had come a long way from its humble beginnings in the 1820s. By the 1900s, it had a large, elegantly designed new headquarters, proper uniforms, and modern equipment.
And one of those pieces of equipment were police whistles.
Back in the early 1900s, almost every police-force in the world issued its officers with service whistles – they were essential for crowd-control, passing orders, getting attention in emergencies, and signaling to other officers. However, their most important role was as an alarm-raising device. In a policing system that relied on regular beat-patrols done on foot, the main use of an officer’s service whistle was to raise the alarm in the event of a crime being committed. If a patrolman saw someone being mugged, for example, they would blow their whistle before moving in to engage the suspect, or would blow their whistle if the miscreant tried to get away.
The purpose of doing this was to let officers in neighbouring beats know that a crime had been spotted, and that the arresting officer (since officers almost always patrolled on their own, without partners) would need backup. The responding officers would blow their own whistles, so that the arresting officer knew that help was on its way, and then run in the direction of the original whistle blasts. A bit like a police car with its lights and siren today, an arresting officer would continue to blow his whistle until backup arrived, so that other officers knew where to run to.
The whistle that I added to my collection is stamped with “STRAITS SETTLEMENTS POLICE FORCE” across the barrel. When this whistle was manufactured, back around 1910, the main supplier of police whistles in Singapore (as well as almost every other part of the British Empire) was the Birmingham firm of Joseph Hudson & Co., which had by then been in operation for over four decades.
Police whistles became standard-issue equipment for officers starting in the early 1880s, when a replacement was sought for the heavy, wooden police rattles, and by the early 1900s, almost every officer would’ve carried one. Police forces (as well as other organisations like railroad companies, hospitals, the postal service, and so on) could special-order their whistles from Joseph Hudson & Co. It was as simple as writing to the company, and placing an order for so-many whistles, and would they pretty-pretty-please include a special stamp on the barrel, identifying the institution or company placing the order.
A custom stamp would then be manufactured, and this was added to the machinery that produced the whistles. The stamp was then rolled across the whistles during manufacturing process, impressing the name of the police-force (or other such institution) onto the barrel.
Because of this, there’s actually a wide range of whistles manufactured by Joseph Hudson & Co (which at the time, was the largest whistle-factory in the world), along with an almost endless array of barrel stamps printed across them. That said, whistles marked “Straits Settlements Police Force” are among the rarest around.
This is largely because of the short time-period in which these whistles would’ve been made, spanning from the first decades of the 1900s, up until the early 1930s, if that. It is unlikely that fresh whistles would’ve been supplied at regular intervals. Instead, they would’ve been sent in batches, if or when the Straits Police required another order. If whistles were recycled between one officer leaving the force, and another one entering it, whistles – which were police property, after all – the whistle of the outgoing officer would likely have been sterilised, and then handed over to an incoming officer, rather than ordering a new one all the way from Birmingham. This would’ve kept the number of new whistles required relatively low. Only when whistles in the current order were running out due to increased officer-numbers would a new batch have been ordered from the factory in England.
It’s because of all these factors – short length of use, relatively small officer-numbers, and recycling of used whistles, and possibly others – that police whistles with “Straits Settlements Police Force” stamped on the barrel are so rare.
So while the whistle is only a small piece, it is a rare survivor and a reminder of an aspect of life that existed in Singapore and the wider Straits Settlements in the early 1900s, when my ancestors were living there in their early childhood.
Cigarette lighters are infinitely collectible. Dunhill, Zippo, Ronson, Parker, and S.T. Dupont, to name but a few, are all big names in the world of antique and vintage cigarette lighters, which dominated the fashion accessories scene during the first half of the 20th century.
Along with all these big names were countless smaller names, makers and dealers, which produced cigarette lighters, both great and small, for every possible consumer. Men, women, for at-home, for out-and-about, for travel, for commemoration, graduation, and celebration.
One of the more common types of lighters were table-lighters.
Table-lighters were larger, heavier cigarette lighters, not designed for portability, but rather, to sit or stand on a coffee-table, a counter, or a desk, and serve as a convenience for guests and visitors who needed a ready flame to light their cigars, cigarettes, pipes, and candles.
Table-lighters varied from the mundane, and even the homemade, all the way to flashy examples in gilt brass, cut glass, and even solid silver.
An Antique Silver Table-Lighter
I picked up this lovely antique example of a silver table-lighter about a month ago, on eBay. I’ve always wanted a table-lighter, especially a silver one, to add to my modest collection of antique lighters. Some lighters, especially those made by famous names like Dunhill, Cartier, and S.T. Dupont, can cost an absolute fortune, but there are also a lot of table-lighters…even quite fancy ones…which can be picked up for a surprisingly small amount of money. And this lighter is the perfect example of that.
Don’t forget that lighters of all kinds used to be extremely common not that long ago, and that lighters of all styles and price-points were manufactured. People like to collect lighters because they are small, portable, easily stored, easily displayed, they have FIIIIIRE!! (always cool, right??) and they’re…usually…a lot cheaper than most other types of collectibles out there.
Of course, this isn’t true of all lighters, or all collectibles, prices fluctuate all the time, but the great thing about the enormous variety is that you can usually – if you’re very patient – find what should probably be quite expensive pieces – for relatively modest outlay.
Such was the case with the lighter in this post.
Where Did the Lighter Come From?
The lighter is made of what’s called Yogya silver, which is the style of silverware manufactured in Indonesia in the early to mid 20th century. Thanks to the Great Depression, traditional Indonesian silversmithing crafts were in danger of dying out, when the Dutch realised that there could be an enormous market for traditional style Indonesian silverware in Europe. All kinds of things – tea-sets, cigarette lighters, trays, plates, platters, bowls, canisters, cigarette-cases, and so much more, were manufactured in Indonesia during this time, between the late 1920s through to after WWII, and shipped to the Netherlands for sale.
It gave the Dutch a new area of merchandise to purchase, and it gave the Indonesians a new market for their products – it was a win-win!
This lighter would’ve been made in Indonesia in the early 1900s, where it was hallmarked, and then either sold locally to people living in Malaya, Singapore, or Indonesia, or else shipped to the Netherlands for sale in Europe.
What is the Lighter Made Of?
The lighter is manufactured from 800 silver – which is a more common silver standard than you might expect, if all you’ve ever seen is sterling. 800 silver was stronger, having a higher concentration of copper, without also sacrificing the beautiful shimmer that silver is capable of producing when polished.
How does the Lighter Work?
The lighter is broadly made of three components: The base, or body, the lighter and reservoir, and finally, the lid or cap on top.
It functions the same as most lighters of the era will do:
The base and the reservoir are filled with cotton wool, and then soaked in lighter fluid. The lighter is slid over the top, and the wick is left to soak up the fluid in the cotton-balls through capillary action.
Then the cap is removed from the top of the lighter, and the flint-wheel is rotated at speed. This generates sparks which, under ideal circumstances, will spark the flint, and ignite the fuel-soaked wick housed inside the silver wick-chimney, which exists to protect the flame and the wick from outside influences (mostly wind).
When you’re done, you simply extinguish the flame by sliding the cap back over the top of the lighter to snuff the flame. You can of course, blow it out, too, but using the cap is a lot easier.
I Want One! Are they Hard to Find?
Yes…and…no.
They’re actually fairly common (remember, they were basically mass-produced in silver, for export), but they were also so common that they weren’t exactly treated very well. I’ve seen loads of them (just in the time when I was searching, I saw at least four or five of them on eBay!!), but they’re often in really rough shape. The snuffer-caps are cracked, the wick-chimneys are broken off, they’re covered in dents… they have all manner of issues!!
By comparison, the one I have is all-intact and all complete and correct. There were one or two minor dents, easily removed, but no other serious damage. If you do decide to go after something like this, and end up buying a damaged one, make sure you know a decent jeweler or silversmith who can repair it for you. Prices for these types of lighters vary enormously, from north of $1,000 to under $200, and everywhere in between.
Closing Remarks
Antique lighters are fun to collect, and there’s an infinite variety of them out there, of all shapes, sizes, operation methods, and price-points. You can find some truly weird and wonderful types, if you have the patience to search, and know how to repair them. Most repairs are pretty easy to make (they’re not complicated machines, for the most part) and you can find lighters almost anywhere, from charity shops to flea-markets, antiques shops to an endless variety from online sellers.
The Peranakan or Straits-Born Chinese are well-known for the intricacy of the items and accessories which were used in their homes and daily lives, from the batik-patterned sarongs, shirts, and blouses, to the brightly coloured porcelain crockery used in their dining rooms, and the pastel paint-schemes of traditional Peranakan townhouses.
One area of Peranakan craftsmanship which is particularly prized is traditional “Baba Silverware”, as it’s called. The items of metalware used in a Straits-Chinese home which were manufactured by Peranakan silversmiths and goldsmiths in Singapore, Malaya, Indonesia and the southern part of Thailand, in the 1800s and early 1900s.
Peranakan silverware and goldware covered all kinds of areas, from chopsticks to curtain-hooks, belts to keychains, kebaya brooches (“kerongsang”), hairpins (“cucuk sanggul”), jewelry, and even little silver and gold mesh purses. And even something like this…
Peranakan Silver Bolster Plates
In traditional Peranakan marriage-beds, a long tubular pillow with a circular or rectangular cross-section, known as a bolster – or more colloquially as a “Dutch Wife” – was a common feature. They served as shared head-pillows for the husband and wife when in bed, or as a body-pillow when one party of the couple was sleeping alone without the other (hence the ‘wife’ nickname, since it took the place of the absent spouse).
In Peranakan families, bolster pillows, which were so heavily associated with the marriage bed, were often given as gifts to newlyweds upon their wedding days. The idea was that the large bolster stretching across the bed symbolised the joining of two families, and the union of one couple.
As they were intended as wedding-gifts, the bolsters were often adorned with sterling silver decorative end-plates which were sewn onto the small panels at either end of the bolster. These panels might be purely decorative, and carry no further significance, or they might, as in this case, hold extra symbolism connected with a healthful, happy, and hopefully, long-lasting marriage.
The decorations on this particular set of bolster-plates hold rather more significance than mere ornamentation, and are actually meant to be symbolic of longevity (the eternal phoenix), wealth, or prosperity (the peonies) and beauty, purity, and status (the peacock) – all things that one would want in a happy marriage!
What is the Point of Silver Bolster Plates?
…ehm…nothing…really.
And yes, I’m being absolutely serious when I say that.
Absolutely nothing.
These thin, embossed sheets of silver were added to bolsters purely for the sake of decoration. They were not there to protect the fabric, to reinforce the seams, to guard against rubbing or wear…they served exactly NO practical purpose whatsoever! Their only function was decorative – to look nice on the bed, and to embellish the bed-linens of the newlywed couple. Awwww!!
How are they Made?
Made of thin sheets or plates of solid silver, bolster plates came in a variety of shapes. The most common ones are rectangular, circular, or hexagonal or octagonal. They’re either left as plain silver, or are further embellished with gilding.
Once the design has been traced on the silver plates, then it’s the job of the silversmith to work it into the metal. In most cases, this was done through what the French call “repousse” – literally pressing-out the design from the back, to the front of the piece, using a punch and hammer to work the silver into shape. It’s a very slow, delicate, fiddly task, that requires the metal to be annealed and cooled several times to deal with work-hardening, when the metal becomes brittle from too much pounding.
Once the design had been finalised and hammered out into the silver, the final step was to punch the holes all around the borders of the two plates, one for each side of the bolster. The holes are, of course, to pass the needle and thread through, so that the plates can be sewn onto the ends of the bolster.
Where Did They Come From?
This set of plates was purchased from a dealer at the local flea-market who sold all kinds of Asian antiques. I recognised the pieces at once for what they were, and asked about their history. They were originally from Georgetown, in Penang, off the west coast of Malaysia, which only doubly-confirmed that I knew what they were. This makes a lot of sense – Penang was a big Peranakan stronghold back in the day with a vibrant community – so things like silver bolster plates would definitely be found there.
Displaying the Bolster Plates
After I got the two silver plates home – which was done very delicately, I might add – then I had to figure out how to display them. First step was to straighten them out, make sure they were flat and even, and then to polish them – not too much – but enough to lift the surface tarnish and give the silver crisp, lustrous glow.
Once that was done, the final step was to find some way of both displaying them and protecting them in a practical manner. In the end, I settled on just simply framing the plates inside a standard, glass-fronted picture-frame – once I found one which was of a suitable size, of course. I centered them as best I could, and because I didn’t want to potentially damage them any further, I left it up to friction (and there’s plenty of that!) to hold the plates in place, inside the frame.
For most of the 19th century, and well into the 20th, the majority of Asia, and a good number of countries outside of Asia, were brought low by the scourge of opium! Even today, decorative, touristy opium-pipes can still be purchased in places like China, and Hong Kong, and antique opium paraphernalia can sell for hot bucks on the internet. But a casual look around online would suggest that a good number of people don’t have a solid grasp on what opium is, how it was used, or what was used with it. It’s been so romanticised and mythologised that in the 21st century, most people are largely clueless about this drug, which has had a presence in the human story for the past several hundred years.
In this posting, we’ll be looking at what opium is, where it comes from, what it was used for, how it was smoked, and what kinds of equipment were used in its recreational enjoyment. So lay back, relax, and breathe deeply, now…
What IS Opium?
Opium is an addictive, pain-killing drug, extracted from the bulbs of the poppy flower. Yes, the same poppy flower that gives you those black seeds you put on your bagels and bread-rolls. Slicing open the bulbs of the poppy causes the opium sap to seep out from the plant. Collected, concentrated and dried until it turns into a dark, cohesive, gunky mass, this is raw or ‘crude’ opium – opium which has not been refined, processed or otherwise altered in any way, apart from the natural processes required to extract and collect it.
Opium in this state is collected from the opium poppies, and when you have enough of it, it slowly dries out and turns into a dark-brown hard, sticky, gummy substance, which can be rolled and formed into blocks, pucks or “cakes”, as they used to call them, back in the old days. Opium in this state can be used for all kinds of things, such as mixing it into medicines for pain-relief, it can be refined into morphine or heroin, or it can be smoked.
Opium and China
Opium has had a long association with the Middle-and-Far-East, as well as being one of the main exports to Europe. Its main use was as a medicine, to relieve various types of bodily pains, from muscle-cramps to toothaches, fevers to gout inflammation. But opium in its raw form could also be smoked recreationally – a practice heavily associated with China in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Restrictions on the types of trade that China would permit with the West, largely the UK and the countries of Western Europe, led to them (again, mostly the British) importing large quantities of raw opium into China. The inability of European powers to pay for Chinese exports with silver (the only currency the Chinese government would accept) led to an enormous opium epidemic across the land as literal tons of opium were shipped in through ports like Canton, and later Shanghai and Tientsin.
The opium supply that the British relied on largely came from India and Burma, where it was harvested, processed, and then shipped through the Strait of Malacca to China where the addicted Chinese traded spices, porcelain, silks and other precious commodities for it.
Opium Equipment & Paraphernalia
As time passed, the Chinese started designing and manufacturing more and more elaborate opium-smoking equipment and paraphernalia, out of everything from bone, or brass, to ivory, from paktong, to solid silver. By the late 1800s, a full opium-smoking setup could be extensive, elaborately decorated, and made from some of the finest materials available.
A typical opium-smoking setup included a tray, at least one pipe, the associated pipe-bowls, a bowl-stand, a container to store the opium cakes, a spoon, a ‘needle’ or ‘staff’, and possibly just as important as the opium pipe and bowl – the opium lamp.
How to Smoke Opium?
So, you’ve got all this fancy stuff – pipes, trays, needles, spoons, opium caddies, cutesy little lamps…but how do you use all this stuff? You’ve seen it in TV shows, in movies, you’ve read about it in books, you’ve heard about it in stories from family-members (or at least, I did, when I was a child!), but how do you actually smoke opium? What’s the whole process behind this thing?
Smoking opium was a very involved process. It’s for this reason that all this paraphernalia and equipment was required. Smoking opium wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment thing like lighting a cigarette, or even filling up a pipe with tobacco. So how do you do it?
Step 1 – Preparing the Opium
Opium is the sap or latex which is extracted from the opium poppy, by slicing the bulb open, and collecting the liquid which seeps out from within. Once enough of the sap is collected, it’s dried in the open air. As the latex dries, it darkens and solidifies. This is raw opium. It’s compressed or molded into blocks or “cakes”, and then sold as-is.
To smoke this stuff, you first need to scrape off a small amount of opium using a pin, needle or “staff”. The amount removed isn’t very much – about the size of a pea. It’s rolled up into a little ball or “pill”, and then placed on a spoon.
Step 2 – Preparing the Opium Lamp
In many ways, the opium lamp is more important than the opium pipe. Without the lamp (or some other heat-source) you simply cannot smoke opium – so no lamp = no high!
You remove the wick-holder from the lamp and fill the reservoir with oil. Then you put the wick-holder (and the wick) back into the lamp and light it. Once the lamp-wick is burning properly, you put the glass lamp-chimney back over the base. The chimney of an opium lamp is low, squat, circular, and dome-shaped, with a small opening at the top.
The point of the lamp is to provide heat, rather than light, so you don’t need to expose a large amount of wick to the air. Instead, only 1-2mm of wick poking up above the wick-holder is really necessary.
Step 3 – “Cooking the Pill”
Once the lamp is lit and the chimney is replaced, you hold the spoon with the opium “pill” over the lamp-chimney. The heat from the flame warms the spoon, and the opium pill begins to melt and liquefy. Using the opium staff, you stir and stretch the mass as it melts, mixing it into a cohesive mass.
Step 4 – Filling the Pipe
After heating and ‘cooking’ the opium pill, it’s rolled back into a ball and then the cooled opium pill is poked into the bowl of the opium pipe. The natural stickiness of the opium will ensure it doesn’t fall out.
Step 5 – Chasing the Dragon
The fifth, and final step, is to actually “smoke” the opium.
In reality, you don’t “smoke” opium in the same way that you’d smoke tobacco, or marijuana or anything else like that, since there isn’t any actual ‘smoke’ involved. To ‘smoke’ a pipe of opium, you held the pipe over the chimney of the opium lamp, and oriented it so that the pipe-bowl is over the chimney-mouth. The heat from the lamp warms the pipe-bowl, which liquefies and boils off the opium sap. The vapour produced from this process is what you “smoke”. It’s inhaled down the pipe and into the smoker. You keep dragging on the pipe until the pill inside the bowl has been completely boiled away, and all the resultant opium vapour has been inhaled.
The Necessity of the Lamp
As you can see from this extensive, five-step process, smoking opium is no walk in the park! In fact, it was impossible to walk, or even move at all, while smoking opium. The need to liquefy and vapourise the opium mass within the pipe-bowl meant that a constant heat-source was required while smoking opium. And since you can’t “light” opium like you do with tobacco, it needed to be an indirect source of heat that was consistent and steady.
This is why in every depiction of opium smoking you’ve probably ever seen, opium smokers would lie down to smoke. It was easier to lay back on a bed or couch, and to recline on your side, holding the pipe outwards and over the lamp, with one hand holding the pipe by the mouth, and the other hand grasping the pipe by the end of the pipe-stem
The Lamp – A Physical Description
I bought the opium lamp featured in this posting from my local flea-market about a week ago, from a dealer in Asian antiques. It’s shape and overall style is very typical of the types of opium lamps used in the 1800s and early 1900s, until the crackdowns on opium began in the middle-and-later 20th century.
The lamp has an engraved and enameled body, made of brass, with hexagonal sides, and a flat base. There’s a decorative, circular, pierced brass grill around the top of the lamp, and a circular hole for the wick-holder. Seated on top is the etched glass lamp-chimney. Since the lamp is designed to provide heat, instead of light, there’s no way to mechanically adjust the wick – it’s simply held in place by a basic, tubular wick-holder. To make the flame larger or smaller, you have to push or twist the wick up or down inside the holder to adjust the height. Oil for the lamp is stored in the brass lamp-base, and as with all lamps, is drawn up through the wick via capillary action, before being burned at the tip which is exposed above the mouth of the wick-holder. Simple!
If you wait long enough, almost anything will show up at the flea-market – even stuff you might never imagine.
I bought this really nifty silver belt from one of the regular dealers at my local market. Lovely person, beautiful stuff for sale…but that didn’t mean they had a clue about what this item was. But then, with something like this, that’s not very surprising.
Belts worn by the Peranakan-Chinese (both men and women, although it was more common with women) were largely made of high-grade silver, high-grade gold, or else cheap, nickel-silver, for costume jewelry. They were found up and down the Malay peninsula, from southern Thailand or Siam, through Malaysia, Singapore, and around the Indonesian Islands.
Because of this wide spread, there are many different styles of Peranakan belts. Panel-belts, layered belts, chain belts, coin belts, mesh belts…there are even Peranakan belts which aren’t silver at all (except, perhaps for the buckle) – but are instead, made of the same beadwork embroidery which was used to produce Peranakan slippers, handbags and other such decorative items.
My friend at the market didn’t know anything about this belt. It was surmised that it was made in China during the Qing Dynasty, that it was an export-piece, and that it was solid silver…and that was all they knew, despite my questioning.
I examined the belt and the more I looked at it and how it was made, and what it was made of (if, indeed, that was true), the more I began to doubt the idea that this was made in China, for foreign export. Yes, it has Chinese hallmarks on it, but just because marks are in Chinese doesn’t mean it was made there…or even that it’s silver.
For one thing, Qing-Dynasty Chinese export-silver was mostly sold to the European and North American markets. I’ve never heard of a Chinese export-silver belt. Trays, tea-sets, coffee-sets, silverware dinner-sets, walking-stick handles, cigar/cigarette cases, even cruet-sets, sure…but belts? Eeehh…never.
Not saying they don’t exist, but in 20 years of messing around with antiques, and ten years of selling them, I’ve never heard of such a thing.
Despite these misgivings, I decided to buy the belt. It was offered at a good price, so I bought it on the off-chance that it might be something more than it seemed.
Researching the Belt
I started by looking up Chinese export-silver belts, and as I initially expected – there really wasn’t much to be found. The only silver belts I could find with an even tangential link to anything approaching China, were those manufactured, and worn, by the Straits-Chinese…also known as the Peranakan. Then I started finding belts almost identical to mine, which I started recognising as distinctly Peranakan styles…which made me stop and think.
From the moment of purchasing the belt, I hadn’t really considered the possibility that the belt was Peranakan – it just seemed an idea too far-fetched to be true, but now I began thinking that perhaps it was!
Increasingly curious about this turn of events, I started asking questions from other dealers and collectors online, who all confirmed my suspicions, but I still had one area of uncertainty, which was the Chinese hallmark stamped into the belt.
Researching the Hallmark
There were what appeared to be two hallmarks on the belt, both stamped on the back of the buckle. The only mark which was halfway recognisable was a two-character mark, which after researching, I found was the Chinese mark of “Zu Yin” (“Pure Silver”). The problem is that Chinese silver marks like this can (and are) faked, and can be applied to other things like pewter or nickel to con unsuspecting buyers. Because of that, I wasn’t going to be sure about anything without getting the belt assayed, first.
To allay all doubts, I took the belt to a jeweler I know, for a professional opinion. He conducted a couple of small, non-invasive tests and was sure the belt was 93.5% silver – 1% higher than sterling. Not exactly the “pure silver” of the hallmark, but high enough to dispel any lingering concerns I had!
Where did the Belt Come From?
To sum up, all indications are that the belt was manufactured in southern Thailand (indicated by the style of the buckle, and belt-strap), by a Peranakan-Chinese silversmith (indicated by the Chinese hallmarks), during the late 1800s (suggested by the size of the belt and the purity of the silver). It truly is a beautiful piece of history, and a fascinating Peranakan cultural artifact, which I’m so glad to add to my collection, small as that collection may be.
The traditional outfits of the Peranakan Cina, or the Straits-Born Chinese, of Southeast Asia was often a “sarong” wrap-around skirt, and a “baju”, a shirt or blouse worn over the torso. Neither the sarong, and more often-than-not, not even the baju, ever came with pockets.
These factors in their clothing effected how the Peranakan carried important items with them while dressed. Men or babas who had pockets in their shirts could easily store stuff in them, or in the pockets of their trousers, if they decided to adapt to European styles of dressing – which many did in the late-1800s.
However, Peranakan men, and women, who chose to stick with their traditional attire (which some do, even today) often held onto their important possessions like purses, keys, pocketwatches, etc, by attaching these items to their belts.
Peranakan belts, usually fashioned from sterling silver or similar, or even solid gold, if you could afford it, were worn by both men, and women. Women’s belts were usually larger and more elaborate, and mens’ belts were thinner and far-less ornamented. Whether worn by men or women, these belts were often accessorized with attachments for holding personal possessions. These hooks, clasps, or holders, fastened in a similar way to European chatelaines, were made of the same materials as the belts themselves – sterling silver, or on rare occasions – solid gold – or as in this instance – nickel-silver, and sometimes even gilt brass, for those whose pockets weren’t as deep as some.
Peranakan Keyholders
Made of sterling silver, nickel-silver, or copper/brass, and sometimes gilt for extra decoration, keyholders or keyhooks were one of the more common Peranakan belt-accessories. They typically had a decorated front, with a ring for attaching a chain or keys, a hook at the back, and a thin strip of spring-shaped metal to hold everything in place.
Because Peranakan belts were typically quite flat and thin, it’s easy to slide the hook over the belt, and the weight of the keyholder and chain is enough to stop it from moving around. Any items such as a purse, keys, a pocketwatch, or any other similar accessory, is simply looped through the chain, or clipped to the end of it, and then left to hang freely.
Along with keys, items like chatelaines were also added to belts via hooks and holders similar to these. Such chatelains included items like toothpicks, pocketknives, ear-curettes and other such items, used for grooming or other types of personal maintenance.
Here, we see the keyholder in position. A sarong is wrapped and folded around the waist, and then rolled or tucked, usually 3-4 times, to tighten the folds and hold it in place. A silver Peranakan belt (in this case, comprised of chain-lengths, and a silver coin, to act as a buckle) is wrapped around the waist and secured in place, to hold the sarong in position. The keyholder is then hooked onto the belt and left to hang freely, with its chain attached, or looped through, whatever items are added to it – in this case, a set of keys.
There are many aspects of Straits-Chinese or “Peranakan” culture which have justly survived to modern times. The clothing, the footwear, the food, the ‘kueh’, the beautiful historic architecture, the silverware, jewelry, and furniture…but one area which is, perhaps, less-represented, is the type of ceramics used by the Peranakan – a style which became known as “nyonyaware”.
Nyonyaware ceramics were heavily used by the Peranakan or “baba-nyonya” – and these brightly painted, intricately decorated pieces of porcelain were to be found in almost every Peranakan home up and down the Malay Peninsula, in Singapore, and Indonesia. Today, they are rare, beautiful, and highly-collected antiques.
What is ‘Nyonyaware’?
‘Nyonyaware’ is the name given to the brightly-painted, pastel-coloured pieces of porcelain or ceramic-wares which were used by the Baba-Nyonya or Peranakan/Straits-Born Chinese in the 1800s and early 1900s. They were a major part of the culture, and most Peranakan households had at least some of these pieces in their home for use, or decoration.
They’re identified by their colour palette of soft greens, pinks, blues, yellows and occasionally darker colours like vermilion-red or a darker, royal blue, and decorative motifs taken from Chinese symbolism and mythology. Peranakan nyonyaware often had floral motifs on them, in particular – peony-flowers, and mythical Chinese animals, such as foo-dogs, and especially – phoenixes. Peonies and phoenixes were representative of Longevity (the immortal phoenix, king of birds) and Wealth (the bright and vibrant peony-flower), which made them popular decorative elements.
Despite their popular name, ‘nyonyaware’ porcelain was not manufactured in the Straits Settlements or the Dutch East Indies where the Peranakan lived. Instead, it was manufactured in China – a type of hard-paste, glazed porcelain which held little interest to the mainland Chinese. At the time, it was cheap exportware, produced for the foreign market, but the Peranakan-Chinese took a shine to this bright, overly-decorated style of ceramics, which matched their own sense of design and decoration, and started importing vast amounts of them to Southeast Asia in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Pieces of Peranakan Nyonyaware
Peranakan nyonyaware ran the whole gamut of porcelain goods, from bowls to plates, condiment-dishes to serving platters, cups, candlesticks, teapots, tea-trays, spoons, decorative bowls and jars, pots and lidded vessels. From kamcheng to Kat Mau, from sauce-dishes to tea-services, and even stacked ceramic serving-containers (“tingkat mengkuk”, in Malay). Everything from the smallest spoon or saucer, to an entire porcelain dinner-service, with matching plates, bowls, side-dishes and serving-plates, could all be found in the distinctively bright and heavily-decorated Peranakan style.
Given this apparent abundance, one might assume that Peranakan-wares are easy to find, and cheap to collect. However, this is, for the most part, sadly not the case.
Much was destroyed or thrown out or simply lost during the Second World War, or else disposed-of, or sold-off by baba-nyonya families who no-longer had the space (or inclination) to store, or use, their ancestors’ extensive porcelain collections. Other pieces were simply just broken, chipped, damaged and disposed of.
These days, they’re valuable antiques, for display, or occasional-use, only, but 150 years ago, they were seen as nothing more than everyday, daily-use pieces of porcelain, of no more consequence or importance than the cereal bowl you might’ve used to eat breakfast from this morning. They were cheap to import, and cheap to buy, and as such, were not always treated with the greatest care. Only the fanciest, largest, or most delicate wares were housed and handled with any level of respect.
Because of this, nyonyaware is now relatively rare, and difficult to find. Pieces often cost hundreds, or even thousands of dollars, even for something relatively small. People who already own nyonyaware either inherited it from their ancestors (I have other Peranakan friends who have substantial collections of nyonyaware which were attained in this way – if they’re reading this – they know who they are!), or else, have deep, deep, DEEP pockets to purchase them on the Asian antiques market. What were once seen as frivolous, colourful, throwaway objects are now highly prized collectibles.
A Pair of Nyonyaware Bowls
Tracking down pieces of nyonyaware in good condition is not easy, especially for reasonable prices. As mentioned, a lot of them were damaged, lost, stolen, broken, or simply worn out through regular use – remember that they were not considered especially valuable pieces, and were cheap, when new – they were exportware, after all, from China.
That said, you can occasionally find nice pieces for sale at affordable prices, and over the years, I’ve managed to accumulate a small collection.
The most recent pieces I found are the subject of this post.
I found these two dishes online, originally one, and then the other – with both pieces identified by their sellers as Peranakan – and which certainly look like it. They match the accepted colour-palette of nyonyaware, and the usual types of decorations – yellow, pink, green, with peonies and phoenixes (yes, those creatures are phoenixes, not dragons!). They’re also of advanced age, as you can see from the wear and nibbling on the edges and sides.
The angled, octagonal shape, with the base and curved sides really give the bowls extra style and character – another thing which the Peranakan of old, enjoyed. Perankan-style trays platters from the same era, as well as bowls, and plates, often had decorative, curved edges, or elaborate scalloping, to add extra flair to a piece. Same goes for items such as stacking containers, which were also of a similar octagonal or hexagonal design.
While most Peranakan dishes were decorated inside, as well as out, this was not always the case, and examples with simple, single-colour glazes – such as the green shown here – were also common. In fact, green (and also white) were popular interior glaze colours.
The bowls are medium-sized, rectangular (or more specifically, octagonal), about 6.5 x 5.25 inches, and about 3 inches high. Overall, they’re in amazing condition, given their age. There is a bit of paint-loss and minor nibbling chips, which are the result of either manufacture (one bowl has a manufacture-induced crack on the base from the firing process), or just simply from old age and regular use.
Given that they’re about 130 years old, give-or-take, and being porcelain – naturally very fragile – they’ve survived remarkably intact, without anything more than light surface-wear.
Dishes like these were handpainted, a delicate and fiddly process, which resulted in the somewhat folk-arty appearance of the decorations, which was another distinctive feature of Peranakan porcelain. As mentioned, they were never designed to be expensive, and were used as everyday crockery when new, and the level of detail reflects that.
Yellow as a background colour is also a bit more unusual for Peranakan pieces. While it was certainly used, and there are plenty of examples of yellow-ground nyonyaware dishes, this is the first time I’ve owned pieces which features it so prominently. Pink, green, and pale blue tend to be a bit more common and popular.
The fact that they’re a pair, and so wonderfully reunited, is pretty amazing for any number of reasons, but they were clearly made to the same shape, style and decorations, and were obviously meant to go together as a set, which I’m glad to have.
Of course, as hand-drawn, handpainted items, they’ll never match fully-identically, unlike something which was, for example, transfer-printed, but the intent for them to match is certainly there – and adds to their folksy charm.
Modern Nyonyaware
Authentic nyonyaware porcelain dates from the 1800s through to the first half of the 20th century, at which point civil, political and military unrest in China, and Asia in-general, made it impossible to keep producing these pieces to sell them to the Peranakan market in Southeast Asia. Changing social, cultural and economic statuses eventually caused the market to dry up, and for decades, no new nyonyware pieces were being produced.
In the 21st century, with attempted revivals of Peranakan culture, crafts, and customs, nyonyaware is also on the rise again. It’s now possible to purchase reproductions of antique nyonyaware pieces, although these ones can be as (or even more) expensive as their antique counterparts, and can still be tricky to find, but are nonetheless beautiful and fascinating pieces.
The things you find at the flea-market, eh? Secondhand jeans, old books, records, kids’ toys, jewelry, furniture, household kitsch, 17th century silverware!…
Wait what?
Mmmhmm!!
Pay attention, kids, and you really can find just about anything!
I picked up this, at-first, extremely unassuming spoon at the flea-market for slightly-more than mere pocket-change. The dealer knew little-enough about it, and a lot of that was sheer guesswork on his part. He believed it could be extremely old, made of silver, likely English…and…that…was really the fullest extent of his knowledge. And because of that, he let me have it cheap!
Looking for more information, I sought the opinion of other antiques dealers at the market, and they were all of the opinion that the shape, style, condition of the silver, and other indicators (I’ll get to those in a minute, I promise!) all pointed to this being a very, very, very old – likely English – solid silver spoon, dating to the last decade of the 17th century – something which I more-or-less confirmed from subsequent research when I got home. That being the case, I dated this spoon to around 1698. Of course, I don’t know this for absolute-certainty (nobody can, it’s impossible!) but the clues to its age are there, if you know where, and how to look.
That officially (or unofficially) makes this humble, battered, worn-out old spoon – of unknown history and provenance – to be the oldest piece of silver in my collection, and the oldest antique I’ve ever personally held! And in this posting, we’ll explore how that conclusion was reached.
Building a Backstory for the Spoon
Researching this spoon was unlike anything I’d ever done before when it comes to a piece of antique silverware, and that’s all due to the condition of the spoon itself.
By laws passed centuries ago – all the way back in 1300 – all English silver MUST be sterling-standard (that’s 925 parts per 1,000, or 92.5% purity of silver by weight). And, by law, all English (and later, British) silver MUST be hallmarked before it may be sold to the public.
To hallmark silver, you – as the silversmith or goldsmith – had to take your piece of silver (like…I dunno…a spoon!) to the Goldsmith’s Hall in London, where it would be assayed (tested), marked (certified) and then returned to the silversmith.
Because of this, every single piece of English silver or gold has a set of hallmarks on it. Typically four: A fineness mark (to prove that it’s sterling silver), a date-mark (to prove when it was made), an assay mark (to prove which assay-hall tested the silver) and finally – a maker’s mark (to prove who made it). These marks changed over time, but it’s almost always these four marks.
Here you can see the hallmarks on another piece of silver from my collection. From left to right:
The maker’s mark, fineness mark, assay mark, and date-letter.
Because of this, almost every piece of English silver may be cross-referenced with the records of hallmarks, to determine who made it, when it was made, where, and what of.
Unfortunately, in 1681, the Goldsmiths’ Hall in London burned to the ground…which took thousands of hallmark-records along with it…whoops!
Fortunately, such a calamity has never happened since, but that does mean that you can’t accurately date a piece of English silver before the 1680s.
That aside, you’d think that finding out how old this spoon was, would be easy! Right?
Well, ordinarily – yes. A spoon like this would absolutely have to have been marked and assayed by the office before it was legal to sell.
And it was.
But, 320+ years of holding, touching, rubbing, polishing, washing and cleaning have completely obliterated the hallmarks which would originally have been stamped firmly into the back of the handle, using four steel punches and a hammer! Which means that those marks would’ve been punched DEEP into the silver. But the march of Old Father Time has completely erased all the marks, wearing down the silver so much that only the merest ghosts of what were once hallmarks, are visible today.
Well – that’s unfortunate. But the fact that you can tell that the marks were once there – even if they can’t be read – is good news – because it means that this truly is a piece of silverware, and not just a tin can someone cut into the shape of a spoon. Also – rubbed-out hallmarks are not uncommon. It happens when the marks are either poorly struck to begin with, or were simply rubbed out from overzealous cleaning over a long period of time.
The Power of Deduction
It was Sherlock Holmes who said that it was “a capital mistake to theorise in advance of the facts. Insensibly, one begins to twist facts to suit theories, rather than theories to suit facts!”
And the man was right. So, with no hallmarks to speak of (or at least, none which were useful to us), how to determine the age of the spoon?
Well, we had to go with what we could see, and deduce from that, the age.
The first major clue to the spoon’s age was it’s mere condition. The business-end was very, very thin – the result of centuries of scraping, cleaning, polishing and washing. The left edge of the spoon (which would contact the plate or bowl, if you were using it in your right hand) was very worn, and had significantly less silver on it than the right side of the spoon. This imbalance in the shape of the bowl tells us that it has seen a very hard, long and heavily-used life – something that only happens from centuries of wear and tear.
The next thing to look at was the construction of the spoon.
The underside of the bowl has a long tang which stretches from the end of the handle, under the bowl and almost to the end of it. Early spoons could suffer from structural issues, due to poor soldering, etc. To reinforce the joint between the bowl, and the handle, more silver was added in this area, resulting in that tang, better known in collecting circles as a “rat’s tail”.
The ‘rat’s tail’ on the back side of the spoon
The presence of the “rat-tail” proved that this spoon was very old – rattail spoons were a very old style, and would’ve largely disappeared by the late Georgian, and certainly by the Victorian era. Some spoons did still have them at that time, but by then, the rat’s tail was for decorative, rather than structural purposes. This tail, because of its size and thickness, was clearly meant to be a practical feature, rather than decorative, making the spoon an older, early 1700s or late 1600s piece.
Reading the Clues
The next indicator of the spoon’s age was the presence (on the back of the ‘terminal’, or end of the handle) of initials which had been engraved into the metal – “A.H.” – clearly those of the original owner’s. On their own, their significance doesn’t mean much – we’ll never know who “A.H.” was. But the fact that they were included on the spoon is another indicator of how old they are.
These days, if someone gave you a silver spoon, you would hardly think of engraving your initials on it, would you? I mean, why would you bother? Spoons are so common nowadays.
But that was not the case 300, 400 and 500 (and more) years ago.
In medieval times, it was common for people to eat food with a knife, and their hands. Spoons were rare, and difficult to make (remember the rat’s tail reinforcement to stop the spoon from snapping in half?). Cheap spoons were made of wood. You could also get a spoon made of copper (poisonous), pewter (poisonous), or silver (expensive!). Since spoons were so expensive and hard to make, you were only ever likely to own one – and because of this, it became the custom for a family to gift a newborn child their own personal spoon upon the occasion of their birth, or baptism, since it signified the most important operation required for life – eating!
This is the origin of the expression of being “born with a silver spoon in your mouth”.
As silver spoons were the most expensive, they were considered enormous status-symbols. A person who was gifted a silver spoon carried it for their entire lives, and to prevent theft and aid in identification, the spoons were often engraved with their initials, and sometimes, another identifier (like their date of birth, or something).
This practice of carrying your personal silver spoon everywhere you went (you never expected somebody else to just…give you a spoon!) lasted for centuries, and didn’t die out until the 1700s, when forks started becoming more commonplace after their on-again-off-again use in the 1600s.
The fact that this spoon has been engraved with someone’s initials would suggest that it came from a time when personal-use spoons were still a big part of dining culture, which would further point to the fact that it came from an earlier time.
The End of it All
Yet another indicator of the spoon’s age comes from yet another stylistic choice used in its construction:
The terminal.
The ‘terminal’ is the name given for that fancy thing at the end of the handle. It’s the decorative part that makes the spoon stand out. Some common terminals are King’s Pattern, Hannoverian, Fiddleback, etc.
This terminal is known, rather cutely, as a “dog’s nose”. I mean, you can kind of see the resemblance.
Dog-nose terminals did not last very long. From the last decade of the 17th century through to the first decade of the 18th century. A period of, at most, maybe 25 years, which really narrows down just how old this spoon might be.
Hmmm…Yes? No? Maybe?
Rule Britannia
The last final, possible, nugget of information that tells us how old the spoon is, comes from the ghosts of hallmarks left behind on the back of the handle.
As I said earlier – All English silver HAS to be hallmarked with FOUR hallmarks:
The date-letter, the assay mark, fineness mark, and maker’s mark.
Of these four marks, only two of them are half-visible. The only two which would help in dating would be the date-letter, and the fineness mark. The date-letter is nowhere to be seen (or at least, not in its entirety), but one other mark is (just) visible – and it may well be the fineness mark.
The traditional fineness mark on British silverware is the “Lion Passant” – or “Passing Lion” – specifically, a lion passing to the left. If you see this mark, it means that the metal is 925 sterling silver.
However, this was not always the case.
In the late 1600s and very early 1700s, for a very short period of time, law was changed, and silversmiths had to make their wares out of what was known as “Britannia Silver”. Britannia Silver is 95.8% purity – higher than Sterling. This might sound great, except that the more pure silver is, the weaker it gets – so weak that it can’t be used to make anything, since the metal would never hold its shape. It’s because of this that the silversmiths of London protested until the law was abolished, and silversmiths could go back to making sterling silver wares again, with Britannia as an “optional extra”, if they wished.
This law lasted from 1697 – 1720, a period of just 23 years.
Britannia silver, unlike Sterling, was indicated, not by a Lion Passant, but rather, with a Lion’s Head, or alternatively, with the figure of a seated lady – Lady Britannia!
The hallmark which is still (partially) visible is large – nearly 1cm from end to end – which would suggest it was the most important one – the fineness mark.
One way to be absolutely sure about the spoon’s date would be to have it independently assayed again. If it is 95% silver, then that would almost certainly mean that it’s from the late 1600s, or at worst, the first 20 years of the 18th century, which would still make it at least 300 years old!
Concluding Remarks
So, there you have it! An antique, 325-year-old (+/- a few years) Britannia-standard solid silver spoon!
There are loads of websites and books about identifying and studying antique British silver, but the dates and information I used in my research came from the very appropriately-named…
https://www.antiquesilverspoons.co.uk/
Update – 25th September, 2023
As I mentioned in my posting, further up, the only way to definitively prove the spoon’s age was to get it assayed. And the only way to assay the silver to find out its EXACT composition is to expose it to x-rays.
To this end, last week, I took the spoon to a gold-and-silver buyer in town who performs XRF-testing – that’s X-Ray Flourescent testing. Using an x-ray florescent machine, the tester very graciously agreed to test my spoon for me.
“95%” “You sure?” “Absolutely. 9-5. 95%”.
A spoon of this age, in this condition, made of 95% silver means that it was almost certainly made between 1697 (when Britannia standard was introduced) and 1720 (when it was made “optional”).
Given the styling of the spoon, its construction, the wear and the personalisation, I think we can finally, almost-definitively say that it is from the end of the 17th century.
With the rise of internet gaming, gaming consoles, and PC gaming, traditional tabletop games such as card-games, chess, checkers, carom, etc, are starting to lose out in the face of stiff competition from their more hip, on-screen counterparts. However, one game which has never seemed to die out, even in the digital age, is the age-old Chinese favourite called…Mahjong!
The most famous of all Chinese traditional games, in this blog-posting, we’ll be looking at the history of mahjong, how it’s played, where it came from, where it went, and what happened to it along the way.
So, shuffle your tiles, build your walls, form your melds, and place your bets!
It’s time to go mahjonging…
Mahjong – What’s in a Name?
‘Mahjong’ is the accepted modern spelling of the traditional Chinese game known as “Mah Jiang”. The most literal translation of the word ‘mahjong’ is ‘sparrows’ (‘Mah’ in Chinese), or ‘chattering sparrows’. This is believed to have been derived from the clattering, chattering, clacking noise produced by traditional mahjong tiles, which sound like chittering, fluttering birds.
An alternative spelling of the game – chiefly used in the United States – is “Mah Jongg” – for some reason, with two ‘g’s on the end. This is actually a trademarked name, and is not in any way related to the traditional Chinese pronunciation, Wade-Giles Romanisation, or pinyin spelling. I’ll explain how it got its “two-g’s” spelling, further on down in the article.
The History of Mahjong
The exact origins of mahjong are unknown. Where, when and by whom the game was invented have been lost to history. Creative marketing, myths, and legend, will tell you that mahjong is an ancient game, invented thousands of years ago, by the great Chinese philosopher, Confucius, as a way to train the mind, that it was played by the concubines and empresses in the Forbidden City in Peking, and that from these lofty beginnings, the game was gradually democratised over the passing centuries to the Chinese peasantry, to become the national game of China!
…Right?
I’m very sorry to disappoint you, but…none of that is even slightly true! Not one bit of it.
Detective-work and educated guesses by Chinese historians seem to have traced the game’s roots to Chinese card-games played in the 17th and 18th centuries. Such games were similar to modern Poker, or Gin-Rummy, which are the closest European equivalents to modern mahjong, in terms of gameplay.
The problem was, of course, that paperboard playing-cards did not last very long. They were easily prone to damage, warping, tearing, and splitting. These thin, paper cards were difficult to hold, fiddly to handle, and lightweight, which means they can blow away in the wind…hardly ideal when you’re in the middle of a game.
The game that’s most similar to mahjong, before mahjong itself was invented, is known as Yezipai, or simply “Yezi”. It was played using small slivers or slices of ivory, bone, or wood, an improvement on paper cards, but still not as hard-wearing as modern mahjong tiles. The thin sheets of ivory and bone were easily broken and could be snapped in half, ruining an entire deck due to one person’s clumsiness!
It’s for this reason that someone – nobody knows who – decided to transfer the designs on the cards onto durable, heavyweight bone and ivory tiles – solid blocks which could be stacked, stood up, laid down, packed and unpacked easily, and which could withstand years of heavy-handed playing.
When this transition took place, nobody seems to know, but it appears to have happened by the early 1800s. As for where the game was invented, that’s a bit more straightforward: In the first half of the 19th century, when mahjong was likely in its infancy, the game was only really being played in one location in China: Ningpo.
A port city in Zhejiang Province, Ningpo was one of several “treaty ports” opened by the British as a result of the unequal Treaty of Nanking, which ended the 1839-1842 First Opium War.
The chief British diplomat stationed in Ningpo in the mid-1800s was a man named Frederick E.B. Harvey. Harvey’s official title was British Consul to Ningpo, and he was in charge of the British Consulate within the city.
Frederick E. Harvey, British Consul to Ningpo. Ca. 1855.
Harvey’s diplomatic career in China started in Hong Kong. Thereafter he was transferred to the International Settlement of Shanghai, and finally, to Ningpo, in 1859.
It was while living in Ningpo that Harvey met a man named Chen Yumen – the person who would introduce him to the relatively new game called ‘Mahjong’.
Harvey’s letters home to England, and diary-entries while living in Ningpo, are the first written English records detailing the gameplay, rules, and culture surrounding mahjong. His writings are also among the first references, in any language – to the existence of mahjong in any capacity, giving us a fairly accurate starting date for mahjong in the early 1800s.
From its creation in Ningpo, mahjong spread to Shanghai, Peking, Tientsin, and eventually, to all of China.
Mahjong in the 20th Century
For most of the 1800s, mahjong remained a largely Chinese game, played wherever four Chinese people could be found to fill a mahjong table, but this started to change at the end of the 19th century.
Chinese migration in the second half of the 1800s, and the turn of the 1900s saw the game being exported to ethnic Chinese communities overseas, such as those in San Francisco and New York in the United States, to the British Asian colonies of Hong Kong and Singapore, and to other cities with large Chinese populations such as London in England, or Toronto, in Canada. Western exposure to mahjong started largely in the early 1900s – and a lot of it had to do with one city:
Shanghai.
As mentioned previously, mahjong is believed to have been invented in, or near, the city of Ningpo, on the southern shores of Hangzhou Bay in Zhejiang Province.
Well, if you study a map of China, you’ll find out that the nearest major city to Ningpo is just across the bay, and a few miles north – the city of Shanghai – built around the Huangpu River, which leads to the Yangtze nearby.
By the late 1800s, knowledge of mahjong had spread to Shanghai. This larger, more cosmopolitan city adopted the game, and made it their own. Mahjong was played everywhere in Shanghai, from inside peoples’ homes, to public parks, teahouses, private clubs, and even in dedicated mahjong houses. Mahjong manufacturing was also centered around Shanghai. The large, urban population meant that there were loads of off-cuts of the materials used to make mahjong sets: Wood, bone, ivory, and bamboo, so the city was the natural location where mahjong sets would be produced.
Four men playing mahjong. Fuxin, China. 1956. Getty Images.
It was from Shanghai that mahjong was exported, either physically, or by word-of-mouth, around the world. It was in Shanghai, or more specifically, within the confines of the International Settlement, that mahjong was first exposed in a big way to Western audiences. British, American, French, Russian, and Jewish expats living in Shanghai (known as “Shanghailanders”) became fascinated with the game, and started playing it with their Chinese friends.
At the same time, Western tourists visiting Shanghai were purchasing sets of mahjong, and taking them home as souvenirs, or writing about them in letters and postcards, and posting these back to loved ones and friends in Europe and North America. Expats who had lived in Shanghai for some number of years, and who had come to love the game, purchased mahjong sets as mementos of their Chinese adventures, and likely played mahjong during the long steamer-journeys home to the USA, Canada, or Europe, exposing the game to even more foreigners.
Mahjong in the West
It was in this way that mahjong started catching on in Western countries – particularly Britain, Canada, the United States, and countries in Western Europe which had extensive contact with China. Mahjong started being imported to the USA in the early 1920s by Standard Oil Company executive Joseph Park Babcock. Babcock had headed up the Standard Oil office in Shanghai, operating out of the International Settlement. While living in China, Babcock and his wife had developed a taste for mahjong, and he got the notion into his head that if he marketed it correctly – mahjong could become huge in the United States!
To this end, Babcock wrote a simplified rule-book for mahjong, and started marketing it aggressively as “Mah-Jongg” (with two g’s) in the USA.
A mahjong demonstration at Selfridges Department Store, London. Ca. 1925.
Mahjong was already starting to gain traction in the U.S., because of, as I mentioned previously – written references to the game in letters and postcards, and because foreign tourists were bringing back mahjong sets from China as souvenirs of their travels. However, it was Joseph P. Babcock’s creative streak that really set the ball rolling when it came to the arrival of mahjong in the United States.
Along with the simplified rules and importing new sets directly from Shanghai, Babcock came up with a whole fanciful “history” for the game. In the early 1900s, all things “Oriental” were highly en-vogue in the Western world. Chinese-style clothing, dresses, furniture, food, Chinese decorative elements and colour-schemes, were all the rage. Look no further than the reconstruction of Chinatown in San Francisco, post-1906, as one example.
“Since Ma is Playing Mahjong!”, from 1924. Notice that the title is spelled the conventional way – “Mah Jong”.
It was into this heady mix of fried rice, silk robes, chopsticks, and a blur of red, black, and yellow hues, that the first large-scale Western contact with mahjong had entered. Mahjong was seen as being mysterious, new, exciting, dangerous, hedonistic, and exotic! No game like it had existed in the West before, and Americans bought up mahjong so fast that importers working with manufacturers in Shanghai couldn’t keep up with demand! Luxurious mahjong sets made of beautiful woods, with inlaid cases decorated with polished metalwork, and intricately carved tiles were bought and sold by, and from big-name department stores and gaming-products manufacturers, such as Parker Brothers in the US (more famous these days for selling “CLUE”).
Mahjong became so popular in America that there was even a song written about it! “Ma is Playing Mahjong”, from 1924! The lyrics are, perhaps, not very politically correct, 100 years later, but its existence speaks to the incredible impact that mahjong had on American culture. You can listen to it here…
It was in this way that mahjong became incredibly popular in the United States, starting in the 1910s and 20s, and going right through the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, and well into the present-day!
Four men playing mahjong. 1947.Getty Images.
While mahjong thrived in the West, mahjong in China was under attack! During the Cultural Revolution – the ten-year period between 1966-1976, mahjong was banned in China for being a decadent, wasteful extravagance, and an “old idea” that had no place in the “New China”! The ban was lifted upon the end of the Revolution, when Chairman Mao died in 1976.
The Mahjong Set
Obviously, to play mahjong, you need a mahjong set. A traditional mahjong set comes with dice (at least two, and sometimes up to four), a wind-disc or indicator, with wind-directions engraved or printed on it in Chinese characters, tally-sticks (for scoring) or tokens / coins (again, for scoring), and last, but not least – the tiles!
A full mahjong set contains 144 tiles, divided into suits. The suits are:
The Circles Suit of mahjong.
Circles, Bamboo, Wan (or ‘characters’), Winds, Dragons, Honours, and Bonuses, also called Flowers and Seasons. Unless you’re playing competitive mahjong, the bonuses/flower tiles, can be discarded, as they won’t affect play unless you’re actually scoring the game. Because of this, mahjong sets which are bought just to enjoy the fun of the game, rather than for competition, usually exclude these tiles, for a set of 136 tiles, instead.
Each suit has four sets of tiles with numbers going from 1-9, for circles, bamboo, the wan/characters, and four-each, of the winds, and dragons. By tradition, One of Bamboo is indicated by a bird (usually a peacock, or similar). The “Wan” tiles have numbers in Chinese characters, with another character (the “wan”) underneath. “Wan” is the Chinese word for “10,000”, so for example, a two-wan tile is actually “20,000”. Again, this is used in scoring the game, but when playing for fun, most people ignore this stuff. There are four-each, of the honours and bonus tiles.
To play the game effectively, at the very least, you will require a pair of dice, and a full set of mahjong tiles (which, again, is 144 pieces).
In the 1800s and during the first half of the 20th century, when mahjong was at its height of international popularity, mahjong sets were sold in fantastically elaborate cases. These cases or cabinets had handles, sliding doors, and tile-drawers to hold the tiles and paraphernalia for playing. Today, such cabinets (there’s usually 4-5 drawers – one for each suit, and a fifth drawer for the bits and pieces), in good condition, complete with their sets of playing tiles and accessories, cost hundreds, or even thousands of dollars each.
Modern mahjong sets, usually made of melamine plastic (unless you’re rich enough to afford a handmade set which is produced the old-fashioned way using bone and bamboo!) are sold in simple briefcase-style boxes for ease of storage and transport. Some modern-day manufacturers, looking to recapture the beauty of the antique cases from the 1900s, will produce modern-day sets in vintage-style cases, complete with the handles, sliding doors and pull-out drawers.
How to Play Mahjong!
Now that you have your mahjong set, you need to know how to use it! How do you play with it? How do you win? What’s the POINT OF THE GAME!?
The following instructions are given based on the use of a traditional mahjong set – which has 144 tiles– and gameplay as followed using traditional Chinese/Hong-Kong-style rules.
The aim of a game of mahjong is to build a winning hand of tiles (14 in number) comprised of FOUR MELDS and ONE PAIR.
A “meld” is a grouping of tiles, and a pair is…a…pair! Two matched, identical tiles.
There are three traditional melds:
Pong, Kong, and Chow, also spelled as “Pung”, “Gung”, “Chi”, and various other spellings, depending on Chinese dialects. For the sake of simplicity, I will use “Pong, Kong and Chow”.
A “Pong” is three identical tiles. For example – three white dragons.
A “Kong” is four identical tiles. For example – four West Winds.
A “Chow” is three suited tiles in-sequence. For example – one-two-three of bamboo, circles, or wans, or 2, 3, 4, or 4, 5, 6…you get the idea.
Once you have built four melds (which would usually be 12 tiles), then you have to get your “pair” – two identical tiles. Once you’ve got that, you’ve won the game! Traditionally, the winner will clamp their winning hand together between their fingers, and then slam them down on the table in triumph, to announce their winning hand! (trust me, you should totally do this. It’s a lot of fun!).
And that’s basically it. There are other details, which I’ll go into later on, so keep reading…
Setting up the Game
To play a game of mahjong, you need at least two people (and ideally, four), a square, or circular table, and plenty of time to enjoy a leisurely afternoon of gossip, gameplay, tea-drinking, and shouted profanity, when you find out that someone has beat you at the table!
First, you have to “wash” or shuffle the tiles. Once the tiles are shuffled, you have to build your walls.
There are four walls. If you’re using a traditional 144-tile set, then the walls are 36 tiles each, or two rows of 18 tiles, double-stacked.
The ritual of building the walls is one of the reasons why mahjong was so fascinating to Europeans when they first saw the game. The customs and intricacies of gameplay were unlike anything they had ever seen with cards, or chess, or checkers. It simply had no comparison to anything in the West. In the American version of mahjong (and yes, there is an American version), this stage of the game is known as “Building the Great Wall of China” (because, why not, right?). It’s another element of the game which harks back to the Western exoticism of mahjong in the early-20th-century.
Once the four walls are built, they’re set out in a square. Then you throw the pair of dice into the square, and count around the players going anti-clockwise until you reach the number of the dice. The person you land on is the dealer.
You throw the dice again, and then count along the dealer’s wall. You break the wall at that number, and then each player takes three stacks of four tiles (so, 12) from that break in the wall, again, going anticlockwise around the walls.
The dealer takes an additional stack, giving them 14 tiles. Every other player takes ONE extra tile (so, 13 tiles). The tiles that you’re given (or have taken) form your “hand”. These are the tiles you will concentrate on for the duration of the game. Got all that? Right! The game is now ready to start.
Playing a Game of Mahjong
To begin, if anybody has “bonus” tiles – Seasons, or Flowers – toss them out. You won’t need them in gameplay unless you’re doing a professional game with scoring. Replace those tiles with fresh tiles from the wall. Take a minute to set up your tiles and arrange them in a way that makes sense to you, and see if you have any patterns emerging, or any melds or pairs you can form. When setting up your tiles, they’re stood up on-end, facing you. This conceals your hand from other players, displays your tiles easily for quick manipulation, and allows you to slide, part, or push your tiles together as required, to build melds and pairs.
Got all that? Right! Next step…
Now, the dealer casts out his first tile to kick the game off. By tradition, a game of mahjong moves in an anticlockwise direction around the table.
A four-player game of mahjong in progress…
Each player TAKES one tile, sets it into their hand, and then CASTS OUT one tile that they don’t need. That is considered one turn. Once a player has done that, play moves to the next participant, and so-on, around the table.
As the game progresses, you’ll end up with two “piles” on the table. One is the “draw pile” or the “wall”, and the other pile (in the middle of the table) is the “discard pile”. These are all the tiles that people have chucked out of their hands that they don’t need. As a courtesy to other players, keep the discard pile neat and tidy, as it helps people to know which tile was freshly discarded, and prevents later confusion during gameplay.
You may take a tile from the discard pile to form a meld, or to complete a winning hand and end the game. However, if you do this, then you must “open” the meld to the rest of the table. So, for example, if someone throws out a tile and you find that taking that tile produces a meld for you, you can grab it and shove it into your hand. But then, you have to drop those tiles down onto the table to show the other players the meld that you’ve built from that discard.
You don’t have to do this if you form a meld from a tile taken from the wall-tiles, during your turn.
And so the game continues until a person has a winning hand of FOUR MELDS and ONE PAIR. A winning hand is typically 14 tiles – four groups of three, and one pair, or 18 tiles – four groups of four, and a pair – although this is much harder to attain, so most people will stick to a 14-tile winning hand.
When you have built your winning hand, line up your tiles in a row, grip them together firmly, and then slam them down onto the table, all together, in one, swift, sure, satisfying, and smug move, to show that you’ve won the game!
And that is how mahjong works! It’s really that simple.
Of course, there are complexities – for example – what type of mahjong are you playing? There’s three main styles – Japanese-style mahjong, also known as “Richii Mahjong” (“Richii!” is what you shout when you’re one tile away from winning!), American-style mahjong, which developed in the 1920s and 30s, and finally, the oldest, and most authentic version – Hong-Kong-style mahjong. Most Asians who play mahjong will have grown up learning Hong Kong-style mahjong.
Buying a Mahjong Set
So – you wanna buy a mahjong set, huh?
Sure! I mean they’re not that hard to buy, are they? There’s loads of them on eBay, AliExpress, and other websites. You can probably buy one in any Chinatown in the world, or while visiting countries with large Chinese populations such as Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, etc. Or, you might just find one at your local weekend flea-market.
If you do buy a set, it’s likely to be a modern set, with plastic tiles, counters, tally-sticks, dice, and other accessories, in a briefcase-style box. If you buy a secondhand set, make sure that the case is in good condition, that all the pieces are present and correct, and that you can open and close the case smoothly and securely – the last thing you want is to pick up the case and have everything spill out! Whoops…
But, I hear you say…
“I Want to Buy one of those Fancy Antique Mahong Sets!”
No problem! You can still buy one of those – but there are a lot more things to think about. Antique sets are more likely to have missing pieces, have structural damage, and of course – have higher prices! Depending on age, condition, completeness and rarity, an antique mahjong set can be had for a few hundred dollars, all the way up to a few thousand dollars!
When buying an antique set, make sure that you have all the tiles – a full set is 144 tiles. A set without the “bonus” or “honour” tiles is 136 tiles. Most sets are one, or the other. If it has less than 136 or 144 tiles, then there’s tiles missing!
Check the case for damage. Splitting, cracking, dovetail-joinery coming apart, and so-on. Check any inlays for fit – if they’re getting loose, you’ll have to poke them out, and glue them back in to prevent loss. Check the drawers to make sure they slide in and out smoothly, and that the handles and doors work properly. A lot of these old cases have split wood, cracks, and faulty joinery, so it pays to check literally every square inch of the case, front and back, side to side, top and bottom. Some faults are repairable with glue, clamping, and reinforcement, others are a total loss.
Check the metalwork, as well. Handles, pull-tabs on the drawers, and the corner-tabs on the sides of the case. Usually, these are brass, or nickel-silver. They’re riveted or hammered into place, so check the nails to make sure that nothing’s coming apart. If it is, nail it back in and glue it in place. Traditionally, these cases were meant to be picked up and carried by their handles – you might not want to do that if it’s a rickety case. A case in good condition should be able to be carried without fear of anything coming apart!
Last but not least – check the tiles themselves. Antique mahjong tiles are made in two parts: An upper tile-face, and a lower tile-base. On the majority of antique sets, these were BONE on top and BAMBOO on the base. Other sets used ivory, or special hardwoods, etc. The tiles are spliced together using dovetail joints. High-quality sets will have solid, firm, secure joints, well carved and tight-fitting. Cheap sets have joints which are loose or in danger of falling apart! Traditionally, no glue was used to hold the tiles together. Simple friction was all that kept them as one.
Antique mahjong sets were manufactured by hand. That means that all the woodwork is hand-cut and joined, and the tiles are hand-cut and dovetailed together. Likewise, the tile-faces are carved or engraved by hand. The more intricate the engraving, the higher-quality the set is. Similarly, the more bone-content you have on each tile, the higher quality the set. Sets with hardly any bone on the tiles are cheap and tacky. Sets with loads of bone in each tile are higher quality, as they can withstand higher-quality, more intricate engravings.
My Antique Mahjong Set
In closing this article, I feel it only proper to write one last chapter – with which to introduce to my readers, my own personal mahjong set.
I bought this at auction back in 2018, and paid what some thought, was a rather exorbitant price, at the time. However, recent developments have shown that I basically paid peanuts for something so valuable that it’s basically irreplaceable…certainly for the price I paid!
Comprised of a rosewood case, complete with brass fittings, a sliding door, and four tile-drawers, my mahjong set is one of my absolute pride-and-joys! I would never sell this, and I love being able to use it. The tiles are made in the traditional way – bone and bamboo, dovetailed together, and carved by hand. I don’t know how old it is, but my guess would be early-to-mid 20th century.
The entire case – including the door, and the four, sliding tile-drawers – is made of Chinese rosewood, or what is known as “huanghuali“, in Chinese. The pull-tabs on the lid, and the tile-drawers are little brass butterflies.
Each drawer holds one suit of tiles. Circles, bamboo, wans, and then the dragons, winds and bonuses all live in one drawer by themselves, for a total of 144 tiles. There’s also two tiny bone dice which go with the set.
One thing you may not have noticed about the set is how incredibly SMALL it is! The case measures just 5.5in. x. 5.5in. x 9in! I’ve seen tissue-boxes bigger than that! The tiles are all half-sized, and they’re absolutely adorable! Here are the various suits of tiles…
The Bamboo Suit, with the peacocksThe Circles SuitThe Wans or Characters Suit. The characters are 1-9, in Chinese, and the red character underneath is “Wan”, which is “10,000”.Last but not least, the Winds, Dragons, and Bonuses. They are East (“Dong”), South (“Nan”), West (“Xi”), and North (“Bei”).
Overall, the set is in fantastic condition. There’s no damage to speak of, and everything is in perfect, working, usable condition. And I do use it! When my friends and I play mahjong, this is the set we use, and we have a lot of fun with it.
A amicable game of mahjong with two of my friends…
Anyway – this concludes this rather lengthy posting, all about mahjong! Its history, how it’s played, and how to buy and use your very own mahjong set.
Happy playing!
Want to Find out More?
Information for this article was gleamed from the website of mahjong historian Gregg Swain, which may be found at Mahjong Treasures.
Additional information was gleamed from the CCTV documentary about the history of mahjong, which may be found on YouTube (or at least, it could be, at the time of writing this posting).
This amazing score, and the latest addition to my pen-collection, was made just before the new year.
I hardly ever browse sites like Gumtree, usually because the chances of finding nice stuff on there is not very high – and when you do find stuff, it’s usually heavily overpriced – but this time – this time – I got lucky.
Extraordinarily lucky.
Sterling silver fountain pens are already expensive. Montblanc pens are even more expensive.
Sterling silver Montblanc pens are even more expensive than that!
Sterling silver Montblanc pens which also have vermeil (gold-on-silver) finishes?
I’ll let you do the maths on that one. Or, you could just go on eBay right now, type in “Vermeil Silver Montblanc Pen”, and then have a heart-attack over the prices…because that’s what I did the first time I ever looked into buying one!
As with the last pen which I wrote about in this blog, this model, which, like the last one, is a 146-sized pen – is part of the Montblanc “Solitaire” lineup, meaning that it’s a pen which is made of a precious metal – in this case – sterling silver.
Yep – I said sterling silver. Don’t let that fancy gold finish fool you! It’s vermeil – 18kt gold-filling over a sterling silver base. The cap on the pen is marked “925” for 92.5% purity of silver – the Sterling Standard.
This particular pen has the ripply, gripply “Barleycorn” finish, which was one of two finishes available to people buying a Montblanc Solitaire pen back in the 1980s, 90s, and early 2000s. The other finish was known as the “Pinstripe” variant. A third, significantly rarer style was the “Chevron” finish, which featured a chevron pattern across the pen.
Finding the Vermeil Barleycorn 146
I stumbled across this pen on Gumtree shortly after Christmas, and after thoroughly examining the pen, decided to buy it. The price was outrageously cheap (for a Montblanc in sterling silver, at any rate) and I knew that this would be a once-in-a-lifetime purchase. I was thrilled that it came complete with the box and cardboard sleeve, the instruction-booklet and everything else – usually, these are the first things to be hucked into the trash when you buy anything short of gold jewelry.
The pen was in fantastic condition. It had – as far as I could tell – never been touched, never been used, and had probably only come out of the box a handful of times in its life, if ever.
Of course, with something this cheap, the first thing you always think about is whether it might be fake.
Right?
Of course right! But just because something is at a price that’s too good to refuse, doesn’t mean that you should, right? Well of course not – because you never know – it might be a deal that IS too good to refuse, and which you would regret, if you did. Provided that you know what to look out for.
After close examination of the photographs, I determined that the pen was real, and that the price was too good to pass up. But as they say – ours is not to reason why – ours is but to view…and buy!
Because of the valuable nature of the package, it was shipped express, at no extra cost, and arrived safe and sound, three days after postage.
My Review of the Pen
If I had to sum up this pen in as few words as possible, I’d say that it was smooth, weighty, and wet.
The nib certainly writes as a medium, as opposed to a fine, and writes really glossy, smooth, and wet. The nib lays down a generous flow of ink without flooding the page, but also without feeling like it’s skimping on anything. At no point did I feel like the pen was going to run dry. That’s a characteristic of Montblanc pens that I’ve noticed over the years – when they write, they lay down really generous ink-flow. If you’re a fast writer, you’ll appreciate something like this.
Apart from the nib, however, this pen has a lot more metal on it than ordinary Montblancs. The cap and barrel are both sheathed in solid silver, one noticeable difference between this pen and a regular 146 is that this pen (like the sterling-striped variant in my previous posting) is much heavier! So for example – a Montblanc 149 “Diplomat”, which is a physically larger pen, weighs only 38g fully-inked…whereas this pen, while physically smaller – weighs 51g fully-inked. If you’re a fan of lightweight fountain pens – then chasing a silver or even a gold Montblanc of this size is definitely not for you.
Is the pen uncomfortable to write with? No. But that said, I wouldn’t be placing the cap on the end of the barrel (“posting”) while doing so, just because the weight may throw your balance off a bit. Unlike with a regular 146 pen, this one, with its silver cap, will add significant weight to the pen, which may pull the nib off the page and cause you to put more effort into your writing.
Concluding Remarks
The Montblanc 146 Sterling Vermeil in Barleycorn is a beautiful pen. Expensive, yes, but beautiful. If you’re not the kind for loud, garish writing instruments, it’s probably not for you – but if you want a somewhat overstated and elegant writing instrument with which to jot down your next shopping-list – this is the pen for you. Of course, they are very expensive, but if you’re patient enough and play your cards right, you can find amazing pens for amazing bargains. Just make sure that what you decide to buy is the genuine article, and that you haven’t been taken for a ride, and you should be fine.
