Tally-Ho is a semi-regular column of my adventures with the Adventure Crew (and sometimes other people). We figured that Singapore can’t be all that boring, and are determined to show other folks how fun Singapore can be… if you know where to look.
The Royal Selangor showroom-shop at Clarke Quay hides a very cool secret: the School of Hard Knocks, a little pewter workshop that anyone can sign up for. They’re open for walk-ins, but it’s best if you call or email ahead if you have a big group just in case. It was the Adventure Crew with Arrch, who was going back to Australia that night!
It’s $30 per head, but I was awesome enough to find a little discount booklet for everyone so we all got $2 off. :D
Basically it’s a short workshop on how pewter is shaped. They give you a flat disc of pewter, and it’s your job to shape it into a little bowl using traditional techniques.
Tools of the trade: a mallet, a hammer, disc of pewter, and letter stencil things
You can’t see it in the picture, but there’s also a wooden block. It’s shaped in a bowl on each end so you have something to knock your disc into. There’s an instructor who’ll teach you how to do things, and help you out if you’re in a jam – which, typically of me, I ended up in. But more later!
So we had to tie on some really strangely-designed aprons, and then he taught us how knock the bowls using the right side of the mallet. There’s a rounded side and a flat side, and you’re supposed to use the rounded side.
But first! You can ‘write’ whatever you want in your bowl while it’s still flat. Most of us wrote our names and/or URLs. I included the date, because it’s fun that way!
The instructor walked us through it; first you shape it into a bowl, then you deepen the inside curve, and attempt to knock out all the uneven bumps. It’s harder than I can describe, mostly because I kept nearly knocking my fingers instead. X_x
Oh, and a sampling of how noisy it gets when you’re shaping the bowl:
The workshop timing is anytime you want. Ideally, you should be done with all the hard knocking and shaping in 30 to 45 minutes. We did it for about 45 minutes and my hard was killing me after that, because you do need a considerable amount of fun.
The instructor will help you out if you're having trouble
I attempted to give my bowl a flat bottom so it wouldn’t roll around like crazy, but I got a bit overenthusiastic. Which meant I needed a lot of help because my plate was beginning to look more like an ashtray at one point. (Sarah called it “interesting”. Polite lies.) I am not very good with heavy equipment, no.
And once you’re done knocking the heck out of it, you have to wash it! This is to give it a nice shine, and you use your typical household rough scrubbing sponges. They leave nice lines on the pewter too, so if you keep doing it evenly, you get a nice shine with very pretty polish lines.
The finished product!
And then you’re done! As a gift besides your bowl, you get to keep the apron, and you get a nice little cert and complimentary Chinese-style coin. It’s a pretty nifty gift to remember the School of Hard Knocks by.
Royal Selangor gift bag
Since the workshop is at the shop, you can buy other professionally-made pewter items too. Like pewter fruit! Though I’m not sure why you would want one.
After that, a late Turkish lunch near Bugis:
I have no idea what it is, but I liked it
After lunch, Arrch went back to get his luggage to prepare for his flight. Meanwhile, we ran off to a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (H2G2) art show somewhere in the area!
And we got lost. As usual.
To be fair, it was impossible to find the space. We had to ask for directions, and turns out it’s super nondescript on the second floor. Kinda freaky though, because it felt so isolated.
Found it!
As the name suggests, it was all H2G2-themed. It was really quite interesting to see what they did with the space, which wasn’t very large.
Mock babelfish
How cheery!
Sad Marvin is sad. ):
And my favorite exhibit:
Wise words to live by
But for a better coverage of what it’s all about, check out the Toysrevil post on it! They were at the opening and everything.
As we were leaving, the people there were nice enough to give us a free issue of KULT magazine! It’s like an art-y type mag, and the issue was all about anti-Aids themes, so some of the art was really quite cool.