SmartShanghai | Polkadot Shanghai

Polkadot Shanghai

By Sarah Hammer, Feb 18th, 2009 | In Shopping

As I get older, I find myself staying in a lot more -- mellowing with age, so they say. As such, my attentions have been refocused on my immediate surroundings -- my house and my crap -- and I find myself rapidly accumulating all kinds of "antiques," toys, nostalgic memorabilia, kitschy junk, bad art, various fodder, and detritus I pick up off the streets. No longer merely content with four white walls and a mattress, I'm rapidly assembling an impressive collection of miscellanea, sure to plague my ensuing lineage for years to come when I finally shuffle off this mortal coil and leave it all to some unlucky distant relation.

Knowing my current fixation with the haphazard accumulation of useless stuff, a friend of mine turned me onto Polkadot Shanghai, an antique and collectibles shop in the Jing'an district owned by Japanese designer, Miwa. And thus I write this article here for those of you who share with me a silent fascination with broken plastic Asian toys, Revolution-era kitchenware, Givenchy glasses frames from the '70s, sun-faded jewelery boxes, Russian dolls, oddly shaped buttons, heart-shaped ice cube trays, and vintage stuffed animals.

So Polkadot Shanghai has all the above and more. In a Japanese-style gift shop that's about the size of an average kitchen (and average Shanghai kitchen, no less), owner Miwa has assembled a rich collection of antiques and curios from her travels in China, Japan, Russia, Hungary, and Holland. Vintage alarm clocks are on display with '50s-style candy dish trays, moon cookie molds compete for space with kitschy slippers, sequined purses, and childrens' aprons -- it's a curious little shop. It's one of those places that you wouldn't stop to glance twice at if you were passing it on the street, but if you actually took the time to pore over the wealth of stuff inside, it inspires museum-like reverence.

Well, I suppose it does if you're like me and woke up one day and decided to collect everything. If not, its still a good place to check out if you're looking for a unique gift for someone that shows that you're a thoughtful person. Maybe you messed up Valentine's Day? It's got these really great beaded panda purses (Miwa is also the designer of "Hustle Panda" -- a popular and much-copied line of Panda-themed stuff), and really nice jewelery boxes.

Check out the webpage here (although it's in Japanese), and stop by the stop sometime. It's all really affordable and fairly priced too.

Note: there is no English-language sign, so make sure you write down the shop number (316 Changhua Lu) before you go if you don't read Chinese.