Page 452 - Chinese SIlver By Adrien Von Ferscht

LANE CRAWFORD Co.
14 Des Voeux Road, Hong Kong [previously at Ice House Street]
circa 1910-1940

There has been a school of thought
among collectors that LC&Co was a
mark used by the upscale Hong
Kong department store Lane
Crawford. Having carried out
research into this, Lane Crawford
has never been known as Lane
Crawford & Co; it’s correct name was
the Lane Crawford Company and
later Lane Crawford [HK] Ltd.

Lane Crawford was established in
1850 as an exclusive fashion retail
department store - often likened to
Harrods in London; despite the way
history claims, it actually began life
in much more humble form at 11
Nanking Road in Shanghai in the
international concession area as a
ships’ chandler, grocer, tailor,
milliner and draper - a quality general
store found in many colonial
outposts at the time. It was two entrepreneurial Scots,
Thomas Ash Lane and Ninian Crawford who worked in
partnership to optimise the benefit of the newly created
opportunities that the Treaty of Nanking offered. Hong Kong
very soon beckoned them.

It’s original motto was: "The Place to Buy Anything from a
Pin to an Anchor”; in 1926 this was changed to “Get It at
Lane Crawford’s”, more befitting of the now affluent and
burgeoning Hong Kong.

The Nanking Road premises was five shops away from the
retail silversmith and luxury goods store Cheong Shing. The
Luen Wo establishment was in the same block 15 shops
along.

As a fully-fledged department store, it further diversified into other luxury goods including food and had a silver
department attached to its jewellery department. It sold mainly high quality tea sets and cocktail wares under its
own mark - it never carried additional artisan maker chop marks.