A puzzle partly resolved by a passage in Zhou Chunbing's 2022 book, Enamel Bureau: Research and Collection of Famous Cloisonné Workshops in Modern China.
A business card with a factory name similar to DeXingCheng, perhaps emphasizing a new, modern look to appeal to chic shoppers in the 1920s? An imitator, or a branch manager? Or perhaps a factory operating post-World War II?
Zhou found a 1947 reference with this exact workshop name, including the owner, so evidently it was operating post-WWII. Whether it was operating before WWII, or whether it survived or was reorganized to be one of the 42 factories incorporated into the Beijing Enamel Factory in 1956 is unclear to me (Zhou, pages 33-34). The workshop existed in 1947, but its predecessor and/or successor, if any, are a mystery. And of course there are no signed pieces to attribute to this workshop, so we don't know the style of their pieces.
Of note, perhaps, is that the address listed for TianXinCheng in the 1947 survey is 52 Chongwenmen Inner Street. The 1935 DeXingCheng flyer lists the shop address as "52 Hatamen Street." In 1949 Hatamen Street was re-named Chongwenmen Inner Street. The business card appears to list both forms of the address, one in English in the main body, the other in Chinese on the card's left sidebar. Is the shop perhaps the last incarnation of DeXingCheng, the name reflecting a "new" revival? Or is it one of the many mixed-name shops cited in a 1928 survey (see slide with quote from Zhou below). How to account for the street number discrepancy between the card (64) and the 1947 survey listing (52)? Puzzling evidence...
"According to a survey conducted in March 1947, there were
approximately thirty cloisonné enamelware factories and over forty shops
selling cloisonné enamelware in Beiping (Beijing). There were also about ten
self-producing and self-selling businesses, mostly concentrated in the
Chongwenmen Street, Wangfujing Street, and Qianmenwai Street areas. Their scale
was evident from the number of employees. The Japanese invasion of China in
1937 disrupted sea routes, and several well-known workshops disappeared for various
reasons, leaving only a few small, family-run workshops that remained, some
disappearing and some reappearing, until the early days of the People's
Republic of China. Clearly, large workshops that insisted on high-quality
materials, exquisite craftsmanship, and superior workmanship could no longer
survive and all ceased operations. ...
On August 31, 1949, the Beiping Municipal Government's
Bureau of Industry and Commerce invited experts and professors including Liang
Sicheng, Fei Xiaotong, Xu Beihong, Lin Huiyin, Gao Zhuang, Ma Datao, Wu Zuoren,
Ma Heng, Han Shoushou, and Wang Shixiang, as well as over 30 representatives
from the Beiping Special Handicrafts Association, importers and exporters,
women's federations, banks, and industrial research institutes to a symposium.
On the spot, nine people, including Liang Sicheng, Fei Xiaotong, and Xu
Beihong, were elected to establish a research institution on special
handicrafts. Under the leadership of Professors Liang Sicheng and Lin Huiyin,
the Department of Architecture at Tsinghua University established an art group
to rescue the endangered art of cloisonné. It is evident that it was precisely
through the rescue and protection efforts of the People's Government and the
guidance and assistance of experts that Beijing cloisonné was restored and
developed.
In 1956, private enamel workshops were merged into the
Beijing Enamel Factory (including investors and absorbed businesses)."
[click on pictures to enlarge them]
