Page 819 - Chinese SIlver By Adrien Von Ferscht

WANG HING & COMPANY
Zetland House, 10 Queen’s Road, Hong Kong
1 Sai Hing Street, Canton
& ShangHai
circa 1854-1941

Wang Hing was probably responsible for producing more Chinese Export Silver than any other Chinese retail
silversmith. The company was also one of the first to establish a large retail emporium that grew to sell a wide
variety of luxury goods.

It is documented that Wang Hing did not exist prior to 1854, yet items appear at auction claiming to have a
pre-1854 manufacturing date attributed to Wang Hing. This is obviously incorrect information.

For almost 30 years there has been a widely held view that the most prolific of the Chinese Export Silver makers’
marks, Wang Hing, was an acknowledged supplier of silver wares to the New York-based luxury goods company
Tiffany & Co; it is probably the most oft-cited piece of information linked to Wang Hing and is quoted by auction
houses, silver dealers and collectors around the world - I was also a culprit once.

Despite the known documented existence of several pieces of Wang Hing silver that carry an inscription:

SPECIAL ORDER
FOR
TIFFANY & CO
N.Y.

My own research had uncovered no tangible documentary evidence that Wang Hing did have a so-called
“special relationship” with Tiffany & Co. To either justify or dismiss this general belief that had become a
permanent part of the Chinese Export Silver landscape, the Archive Department at Tiffany & Co agreed to carry
out an investigation with me that involved scouring the entire archived ledgers from 1858-1906. The results
show there is no documentary evidence that Wang Hing was a direct supplier to Tiffany during this period. The
name Wang Hing does not appear in any Tiffany archived ledgers.