Shanghai Museum of Arts and Crafts

The Shanghai Museum of Arts and Crafts (上海工艺美术博物馆, Shànghǎi Gōngyì Měishù Bówùguǎn) at 79 Fenyang Road is a small museum of Chinese decorative crafts in a white villa. Go to see fine carving, lacquer and costume work at close range, and to watch craftspeople at work in studios upstairs. The Shanghai government’s English portal gives hours of 9:00-11:30 and 13:00-16:30, closed Mondays, with adult tickets at 8 yuan. That page is dated 25 November 2025, and an older 2019 listing gave different hours, so check again before you travel.

The house is a reason to come in itself. The government page describes a three-storey white building in French neo-Renaissance style. Chinese Wikipedia says it was the residence of the head of the French Concession Municipal Council (公董局), nicknamed the Little White House (小白宫). It gives two dates and does not choose between them: completed in 1905, or built in 1921-22 with money from the Universal Savings Association and designed by Laszlo Hudec. Treat the construction date as unsettled.

The building’s later uses read like a short history of the city. According to Chinese Wikipedia, the World Health Organization used it as an office after the Second World War, Mayor Chen Yi lived there after 1949, and the Sino-Soviet Friendship Association was based there from 1954. The Shanghai Arts and Crafts Research Institute (上海工艺美术研究所) moved in during May 1963, and the museum opened in October 2002. The house was protected as a municipal cultural heritage site in 1989 and was in the first batch of Excellent Historic Buildings.

Inside, the main hall has a carved lacquer screen of the goddess of the Luo River, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, jade, ivory and rosewood. The galleries show carvings in ivory, jade, lacquer, porcelain, wood, ink stone and bamboo. Look for the unfinished Mushroom Ink Stone, the last work of Chen Duanyou, described as one of the founders of Shanghai ink-stone carving. There are also Chinese opera costumes, including robes woven with gold thread and crowns decorated with kingfisher feathers.

On the third floor, ten workshops let you watch crafts such as embroidery and jade carving being made. This is the part to plan around, since it shows how the objects downstairs are produced.

Fenyang Road is a quiet, tree-lined street, so the museum pairs well with a walk through the surrounding former French Concession. Show the Chinese address on this page to a taxi driver.