An inside-out view of Singapore’s newest museum.

A love for colours that clash with harmony and an exquisite sense of aesthetics that prizes craftsmanship and minute detail distinguish the material culture of the Baba Peranakans. The heirlooms of wealthy merchants and their humbler kin are now gathered in the former Tao Nan School at Armenian Street, which now houses the Peranakan Museum.

One of the stars of the galleries within is a beadwork tablecloth from early 20th century Penang, featuring a tapestry of exotic birds and flowers threaded with a million minute glass beads using silk and cotton. Measuring 126 x 118 cm, this is one of the largest pieces of Peranakan beadwork in existence and was probably used in the bridal chamber as a firmament on which fine silver, blue porcelain and betel boxes were laid.

At the Heritage Conservation Centre of the National Heritage Board, a conservator works on a Srekap Laok or food cover from Palembang, South Sumatra, circa 1900. Fashioned from Pandan leaves and held together with rattan strips, the food cover is elegantly decorated with gilded phoenixes (which symbolise marriage and fertility) and murai birds (representing love). With a velvet top sewn with myriad beads and a lacquered finish, the cover would have probably been reserved for ceremonial functions such as weddings.

Phoenixes also adorn the Ranjang Kahwain or wedding bed of Quah Hong Chiam, a Penang-born Nonya who moved to Singapore after her marriage early last century. Made from gilded namwood (said to be a rare hardwood tree), the bed is replete with ornate carvings and would have been dressed with rich beadwork and embroidered curtains during its use. The wooden parts are slotted together without nails, which allow the bed to be dismantled part by part. It’s said that seven of Nonya Quah’s 11 children were conceived born on this very bed.

More than a mere display of artefacts, the Peranakan Museum offers a post-modern narrative of identity and experience, from the second storey that is dedicated entirely to the 12 days of festivity and fertility that mark a traditional Peranakan wedding to a dim and narrow tunnel on the third floor (which comes with an advisory for the young and vulnerable) lined with claustrophobic sackcloth and the spine-chilling wails of weeping mourners.

For the masses who question not the mutability of culture, the museum offers few answers but merely raises a hall of mirrors in its lavish accounts of the lives (and death) of true blue Babas and Nonyas. In their seamless fusion of symbols from the East and West and embrace of a homeland far removed from their forefathers, the larger-than-life faces that greet guests and bid farewell from the museum’s walls do so with a note of minor pride and the flavour of mixed bloodlines.

Tags: Peranakan Museum