OH - ON HING - Silver Bowl

[MikeOxford]

Hi,
Does anyone have any information relating to ON HING. I believe it was a retailer of export silverware.
There is nothing i can find on the internet about ON HING.

The reason for asking is because i have a bowl by them as shown in the photos.
It weighs 1.37kg, is 16cm tall and 29.5cm wide.

More images can be found here:
https://1drv.ms/f/c/f5134bd65fb689d4/El ... iWkpZEutxg

Any information would be great. Thank you!

[dognose]

Hi,

Welcome to the Forum.

Just shooting in the dark and only offering the below a route for further research, but it may be worthwhile investigating the work of the Singapore-based silversmith Onn Sing, AKA Yuan Xing, who was operating around 1900. Spelling errors in punches are not unknown when attempting to make an English version of the mark.

As said, only offering the above as a route for possible research.

Trev.

[MikeOxford]

That was our initial thought as well. However, do you think different spellings are usually phonetically similar, so just different ways of writing the original Chinese phonemes.In this case, it may not be close enough to attribute this to Onn Sing. But there’s always the chance it could be.

This one seems to have everyone stumped

I really appreciate your message!
Mike.

[shikiamondo]

That was our initial thought as well. However, do you think different spellings are usually phonetically similar, so just different ways of writing the original Chinese phonemes.In this case, it may not be close enough to attribute this to Onn Sing. But there’s always the chance it could be.

This one seems to have everyone stumped

I really appreciate your message!
Mike.

Hi there,

There is still a lack of documentation and information on Chinese artisan workshops manufacturing export silver for retailers. We could only attribute the piece to a particular maker for undocumented marks by correlating the style and similar examples. From the Chinese reference book published by the Tsinghua University press, there's only one phonetically 'On Hing' （Cantonese for 安興）who was based in Guang Zhou, and the author concluded they had worked for Wang Hing in the Late Qing (1880-1911). However, there aren't any photo references or documentation that shows they used English punches.


Kind regards,
Connor

[Adrien von Ferscht]

ON HING:
AN XING 安興 [aka ON HING; O.H.] [jyutping ON HING][hakka ON HIN][hokkien AN HENG] CANTON & HONG KONG
An artisan workshop that is recorded as making items for WANG HING; LUEN WO AND TUCK CHANG
As many workshops did at this time, they also sold direct from a front-of-house showroom of the workshop under the "ON HING" or "O.H." marks