Swetco store on Bubbling Well Road
Lisa Dinaburg and her daughter Eda (Ida), who married Alexander Shvetz, son of the original owner of Swetco, outside the store on Bubbling Well Road. Fred Shvetz, via China Rhyming.
A recent investigation brought to our attention the Swetco store, at 727-729 Bubbling Well Road. The store opened in 1935 under a name that was both an abbreviation for Swedish Trading Co. and, apparently, a reference to the owner’s surname, Shvetz; the Chinese name was initially 四淮脱高, and later 瑞典洋行. The store sold high-class cut glass, household furnishings and fancy gifts - all “high quality goods at reasonable prices for every purse”. The managing director was Wm. M. Henkin, and the manager was E. M. Baumzweiger. The store had branches in Harbin and Tientsin.
“The display inside the store bears out the promise of the windows”, wrote The China Press in December 1936. “One huge case across the back of the room is full of nothing but cut glass and crystal, such as should grace a well-dressed dining room. There is a large selection of the famous Bohemian crystal, some Finnish “Kurgula” and some of the equally fine “Orrefos” from Sweden. Goblets, cocktail glasses, wine glasses, whiskey and wine decanters, cruets - in fact, every sort of article ever made of this lovely glass. Swetco also has an assortment of colored glass [...], dinner and tea sets of Czechoslovakian and Chinese porcelain and a variety of different patterns in Swedish and German cutlery. Chromium plated odd dishes and small pieces for your living room are also in abundance. [...] And if one is looking for gifts, there are countless small articles, which would always be acceptable, such as all manner of accessories for milady’s dressing table, manicure sets, vases, notebooks, wallets, lighters, cigarette cases, ash trays and more.”
The store’s founder, Efraim Grigorievich Shvetz (Эфраим (Ефим) Григорьевич Швец; 1874-1946), was originally from Kherson province, in today’s Ukraine. He owned a successful haberdashery in the town of Nicolaev, which he later recreated in Petersburg, Harbin and eventually Shanghai. His children, all born in Nicolaev, were Roman (b. 1909, listed in Shanghai as broker), Bella (1917-2012, dentist) and Alexander (1913-1993, listed as merchant), whose wife Ida (Eda) is in the picture above. A fake gravestone for Efraim G. Shvetz exists in Song Qingling’s Memorial Park in Shanghai.
In April 1938, Swetco was among the 30 Russian stores which the local anti-Bolshevik publication Aktiv called to boycott; the list included Shanghai businesses and entrepreneurs that presumably sold Soviet goods or advertised in Soviet press. But Swetco survived this attack, and stayed in business as late as 1947.
The building on Bubbling Well Road (West Nanjing Road 南京西路) where Swetco was located, near the east end of Love Lane (Wujiang Road 吴江路), is no longer standing.
Image: Rebecca Ewing Peterson, Find-A-Grave.