Schiff & Thorbecke – One of the China Coasts Best Partnerships

Ellen Thorbeck’s Shanghai: Photographed and Depicted by Ellen Thorbecke with Sketches by Schiff is a great, but rarely seen these days, book. Shanghai’s great newspaper, ‘the old lady of the Bund’, The North-China Daily News actually published it in 1940. Thorbecke and Schiff (an Austrian artist working in Shanghai) worked together several times on books about Hong Kong and Peking as well as Shanghai – their great 1934 guide to Peking was a large book – Hong Kong and Shanghai were more manageable publications. Thorbecke, a German who married a Dutch Ambassador to China, was an accomplished photographer and photo-journalist who worked in China a long time. The trademark style of using Schiff’s amusing colourful sketches of people over, say, a Thorbecke photograph of Jessfield Park (Zhangshan Park) was considered sacrilege by some photographers but the public liked thre combination (and it would be nice to see some of Shanghai’s photography and art community try something similar today perhaps). The mix of essays, photos, drawings and little epigrams was very popular and sold really well reflecting a taste for art-nouveau styles in Shanghai and a fondness for the eccentric among China Coasters.

Anyway, below is an advert from the North-China Daily News advertising the book in 1940 – it includes some more Schiff sketches – ‘tea at the French Club’, ‘Blood Alley’, ‘Moscow Boulevard’ – come on, how can you not rush credit card in hand to your local antiquarian bookseller!! However, just checking Abe Books you might need US$800 for a good copy!!