NUS MuseumKent Ridge
Clay & Colour: Ceramics from the Alice & Peter Tan Collection
435 polychrome Straits Chinese export ceramics donated by Alice and Peter Tan, spanning 19th-century Qing kilns to Peranakan tableware and ceremonial wares.
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At the launch, historian Kwa Chong Guan remembered these plates and bowls in his grandmother's cabinet. She called them pinggang mangkok Shanghai, Shanghai crockery, after the port they shipped from. Nobody said "Peranakan porcelain" until the 1970s, and nobody collected it before then either.
The display comes from Mrs Alice Tan, who married into a Straits Chinese family and began collecting in 1980, then gave 435 ceramics to NUS Museum in 2023. They are overglaze polychrome wares, painted in Jingdezhen for Straits Chinese homes, where they served as wedding gifts, altar vessels and tableware for birthdays. You'll keep spotting phoenixes and peonies in the bright enamels. If your family has a cabinet of plates nobody is allowed to eat off, this is where that habit ends up.
It extends the museum's chronological display of Chinese ceramics from the Lee Kong Chian Collection, so leave time for both. Entry is free, Tuesday to Saturday, 10am to 6pm.
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Historian Kwa Chong Guan's grandmother called these plates "Shanghai crockery", after the port they shipped from. 435 enamelled pieces painted in Jingdezhen for Straits Chinese weddings, altars and birthdays, thick with phoenixes and peonies.
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Image credits
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- Fear No Power: Women Imagining OtherwiseCourtesy of National Gallery Singapore
- Singapore Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2026Courtesy of Singapore Art Museum
- Maria Taniguchi: AfterimageCourtesy of Singapore Art Museum
- NUS MuseumJoshua Rommel Hayag Vargas, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Lee Kong Chian Natural History MuseumMoheen Reeyad, CC BY-SA 4.0