Chettinad Festival | Rapid fire with Peter Lee
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Meet Peter Lee, Singaporean collector, curator and cultural historian, and a man fascinated by what happens when cultures travel.
Lee’s collection spans Peranakan treasures, Tamil and Indian textiles, old photographs and objects that tell stories of trade, migration and cultural exchange across Asia. He is the Honorary Founding Curator of NUS Baba House, a beautifully preserved 19 th century Peranakan home in Singapore. His work with the Peranakan Museum has taken him from batik and textiles to the extraordinary ways motifs and ideas travel across Asia.
And now he is in Karaikudi for the Chettinad Festival, where an exhibition presented by the Registry of Sarees features pieces from Peranakan communities drawn from Peter Lee’s archives. Lee is looking at a culture shaped by merchants who travelled the world and brought the world home.
In this video, he has a word of advice to young collectors, and talks about his favourite Indian textile. There are two: Chintz and Kalamkari. There is a rare pornography collection that will never be publicly displayed. Meanwhile, what do a Chettinad collector and a Peranakan collector have in common? Pulicat sarongs, says Lee. Also known as kain pelikat , they can be traced to the 17th-century port town of Pulicat or Pazhaverkadu in Tamil Nadu. Typically worn by Malay men. And a lot like the lungi in South India.
The Hindu Sunday Magazine / arts, culture and entertainment / arts (general) / library and museum / society / human interest
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