Did You Know About Hong Kong’s Million-Object Design Collection?

John Wu enters a room that seems, at first, as cool and sterile as a bank’s back office. But with time, even a bank’s back office can take on the sepia tones of history. Wu reverentially places a book upon a table, flipping the tome open to reveal pages of black and white photographs. 

“This is the third generation Hongkong Bank Headquarters,” he explains. The book consists of 48 photos documenting the opening of the building on October 10, 1935 – Hong Kong’s first commercial building with air conditioning and heat. “An amazing record that captures the moment,” marvels Wu. It’s the most expensive item he has ever purchased: around HK$80,000. “My limit was $200,000 so this was a very happy price for me,” he says. “A bargain, because if I were to put those individual photos on eBay, each would get $10,000 at least.”

Over the years, Wu has amassed many such treasures, and some are on display where we are sitting in the Graphic Archive at the Hong Kong Design Institute. On a nearby shelf, there is a rotary phone bearing the mark of the now defunct Hong Kong Telephone Company. Bright orange, it won’t be ringing with new business soon, but it whispers the story of technology’s rise. In the corner sits a grocery store rice barrel, a relic from a mode of retail that is fast disappearing. Signage from a closed up shop sits nearby, metal wrought into the robust beiwei characters of the calligrapher Au Kin-kung.

Here, mundane items that would be tossed away in the normal course of things somehow remain: receipts and labels, handbills and order forms; the minutiae of daily life written in the orderly penmanship of bygone generations. 

Treasures in the trash

A graphic designer by trade, Wu is best known as a collector of almost any design ephemera embodying Hong Kong’s rich visual culture and heritage. He has almost single handedly populated the Graphic Archive over the past eight years. Contained within 13 rolling shelves, this is a reference library of objects available on request. 

Wu says many people ask him why he collects so many seemingly trivial objects. “To me, there is one theme: good design,” he explains. “It’s not about how old the object is or how valuable. My first priority is that I can learn something from this paper or invoice or book. A good design, that’s the most important criterion to acquire something.”

If sold, the more valuable of Wu’s items would more than recoup what he has spent on the collection – a sum he is unwilling to divulge. But he is unlikely to sell. “I’m a black hole,” he says. “Only in, never out. It’s not my intention to make a profit by collecting things.” The only exceptions would be to complete someone else’s collection, or to exchange any duplicates he may have with another collector. 

Collecting is serious business to Wu, who pursues it with a single-minded zeal, sometimes leaving a situation abruptly if he gets wind of some artefact to be acquired. “I sit at the back of auctions so that other bidders can feel a strong willed person behind them,” he says. “From the back of the room, I can see my opponent. I put my hand up like it’s on Viagra. You never put it down because this puts psychological pressure on the other bidders.” 

Wu traces the origin of his collection to a garbage skip he encountered in 2017. It turned out to be full of objects from a medicine company called Louie Ming Chun (雷嗚春), founded in the 1940s, that had closed down after 40 years of operations. The company had owned two apartments that had been put up for sale, their contents junked. Wu sifted through the rubbish, discovering a magazine from 1953 and some old shopping bags, among other things. After Wu offered a refuse collector HK$500 for the items in the skip, he was led into the apartments, where he ended up paying HK$18,000 for the contents of 20 black garbage bags: time capsules from the 1940s to the 80s containing newspapers, packaging and magazines. 

“It changed my brain. And from then I wanted to focus on collecting Hong Kong graphic design,” says Wu. His patient wife, Karen, now faithfully sorts and preserves her husband’s acquisitions, some of which arrive in very sorry states.

Hong Kong’s evolution

By Wu’s reckoning, 95 percent of the collection is made up of objects related to Hong Kong, but he sometimes acquires objects from overseas if they complement the collection or “complete the narrative,” he says. Together, these materials chart the evolution of Hong Kong visual communication from the 1930s to the present day, offering insight into Hong Kong history, visual and material culture, social science, printing history and more. 

The oldest part of the collection covers Hong Kong in the early 20th century. Well before graphic design emerged as a professional discipline on these shores, Hong Kong had a vernacular style of visual communication practised by so-called commercial artists whose skills could involve anything from drafting to painting to calligraphy. Their work adorned packaging, billboards and much else; this particular aesthetic is enthusiastically celebrated in the nostalgia of local lifestyle brand G.O.D. 

But much of the collection reflects the plutocratic nature of Hong Kong, with objects from major corporations like HSBC, Jardine Matheson, Hong Kong Telephone and the MTR, with a particularly strong representation from pioneering graphic designer Henry Steiner.

All of these objects reflect the cultural, social and economic evolution of Hong Kong. There was a particular shift following the civil unrest of 1967, with government-led civic awareness campaigns that often featured the work of Arthur Hacker, best known as the creator of the monstrous litterbug Lap Sap Chung. Among the key pieces of work by Hacker that Wu has collected are materials promoting the 1969 Festival of Hong Kong, a celebration of local heritage and culture aimed at fostering a sense that Hong Kong was a home, not simply a way station to take shelter before moving on. “I’m not ashamed to say I must be the world number one collector of Hong Kong Festival items.” Wu says. “I don’t think even the Hong Kong Government has this much for themselves.”  

Wu also has innumerable posters for the film and art festivals organised by the Urban Council, which include modernist works by prominent artist-designers such as Cheung Shu-sun, Kan Tai-keung and Rebecca Lee. There are other respected figures too: Freeman Lau (who designed the graphic identity for Wing Wah Bakery), Tommy Li (one2free and Honeymoon Dessert), Victor Cheong (SPCA), Hon Bing Wah (Hong Kong Arts Festival) and Allen Hong (Legco and Apple Daily). 

Each designer gives form to a particular spirit or time. The work of Alan Chan, for instance, embodies the swaggering brio of the 1980s with his Cantopop album covers and graphics for nightclubs. While Chan’s androgynous imagery swims flamboyantly across the sightlines, Stanley Wong’s meditations on the red-white-blue tarp turn the perspective inward, reframing the value of a humble material to reflect the positive spirit of a city and transforming it into a symbol so potent that it succinctly articulates the diverse, enigmatic identity of the vast group known as Hongkongers.

A future for the past

The Graphic Archive contains 30,000 items, but these represent only a fraction of Wu’s entire collection, which comprises over a million objects. They fill containers and warehousing in Lau Fau Shan, Tsuen Wan, Kwai Chung and Kennedy Town. Wu’s tiny Sheung Wan office is filled to the point that one false move might leave you trapped under an avalanche of printed matter and memories.

That’s not all. There’s also the Lung Wah Hotel, a storied Sha Tin restaurant that also operated as an inn from 1938 to 1985, drawing the likes of Bruce Lee and wuxia novelist Louis Cha. Today, it is best known for its roasted pigeon, but it is also home to a curated space called Hong Kong Radiance that Wu curated alongside two partners, the Folk Museum (民間博物館) and an Urbex group (窮遊廢墟). Arranged like a film set, the space encourages visitors to rummage through drawers and flip through albums of Hong Kong relics. 

In the end, John Wu’s collection is not merely a catalog of objects; it is a living history of Hong Kong itself. Each item, from a faded receipt to a bold corporate logo, tells the story of a city that has constantly reinvented itself — its culture, its economy and its identity — through design. Wu’s relentless pursuit of these pieces, with their seemingly humble origins, mirrors Hong Kong’s own journey: a place where the past, present, and future collide in unexpected and often beautiful ways.