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MUSEUMS are much more than about items on display these days. They are about the stories behind those items as well.
Take the $12-million boutique Peranakan Museum, which opens next Saturday in what was once the Tao Nan School in Armenian Street. Work on it started just over two years ago.
The world's most comprehensive collection of Straits Chinese, or Peranakan artefacts, it contains more than 1,200 items showcasing this unique South-east Asian culture.
The Peranakan community began with early Chinese immigrants in Malacca, Penang and Java adopting local customs and marrying local Malay women.
Peranakans, famed for sarong kebayas (embroidered blouse-and-batik ensembles), kuehs (cakes) and feisty matriarchs (bibiks), began to live a blend of Malay and Chinese lifestyles peppered with British and Dutch influences.
The items on show reflect these influences, and range from intricately beaded shoes to a grand wedding bed to jewellery. Also on display is the largest Peranakan beadwork tablecloth, using one million beads.
The treasures are often all the more precious for their 'True Blue' individual histories.
That is something Dr Kenson Kwok, 58, director of the Asian Civilisations Museum which is developing and operating the Peranakan Museum project, can attest to.
Read the full story in Friday's edition of The Straits Times' Life!
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