Page 649 - Chinese SIlver By Adrien Von Ferscht

Chinese name Xian Shi [right] which proved a successful innovation and is still used
to this day. Less successful was Sincere’s early attempts to introduce female shop
assistants which had to be terminated in dismissal, including Ma’s own wife and
sister-in-law. Ma was successful in adopting lavish window displays that were devoted
to one specific category of merchandise; a totally foreign concept to the “pile it high
and never price anything” concept the Chinese were used to.

Ma was determined to gather highly skilled artisan craftsmen to produce own-brand
quality merchandise in his own workshops exclusively for his stores and silver
featured quite high in that plan. What both Ma and the Kwoks were doing was to
democratise shopping for the burgeoning middle class while building into that democratisation a way of
retaining the important element of the aspirational needs of that class. In silver production this manifested in
what was at the time an innovational blend of “middle of the road” silver items of quality with an “aspirational”
range of quality items that equalled the best of many of the independent Chinese Export Silver retailers such as
Wang Hing. It is because of this, one can find some “important” pieces of Chinese export Silver carrying the
Sincere mark as well as more utilitarian items that appealed to the aspiring customer of the day.

This circa 1925 Sincere & Co cake server would have been in the same offering as an item such as the covered
preserve dish [below].