Important Silversmiths - Kwong Hing Loong & Co
Kwong Hing Loong & Co is one of the most remarkable Chinese Export Silver retailers. The firm occupied large premises both in Hong Kong and Singapore, where they manufactured and retailed high-quality silver and gold jewellery, silverware, and watches of all kinds.
According to the scholar Adrien Von Ferscht, the company had three individual shops on High Street in Singapore. They offered intricately decorated silver pieces applied with dragons, cranes or genre scenes in high relief. Traditional Chinese decorative motifs such as bamboo, chrysanthemum, plums, and cherry blossom were perfectly combined with Western forms of tea sets, jugs, cups, vases and bowls.
19th Century Chinese export silver cup with cover, of an inverted and square pear shape, standing on a square base, the body showing a compendium of the finest styles used in Chinese export silver, first panel depicting two flying dragons chasing the pear of wisdom amongst clouds, second blooming chrysanthemum flowers, third a blossoming cherry tree with flying birds and fourth a lush bamboo forest with birds.
Hallmarked with the retailers mark KHL for Kwong Hing Loong & Company.
Reference Number: A6308
Singapore premises also specialised in the Canton blackwood furniture peculiarly inlaid with mother-of-pearl, which was highly in demand for not only a large Western audience but also for a prominent Chinese nobility.
Although the name of the founder was lost, it is known that the firm employed over a hundred talented enamellers, lacquerers, silver and gold artisans. Kwong Hing Loong & Co pieces usually were hallmarked with initials "KHL". Nowadays their works are quite rare and mostly sought after by most Chinese Export Silver collectors.