He finds forgotten treasures in ‘trash’
The 173-year-old Cathedral of the Good Shepherd is one of the places in Singapore where Jevon Liew, 32, has salvaged not just countless artefacts, but also the lost stories of a forgotten past.
The 173-year-old Cathedral of the Good Shepherd is one of the places in Singapore where Jevon Liew, 32, has salvaged not just countless artefacts - but also the lost stories of a forgotten past.
SINGAPORE: There’s a grand wooden armchair that was built specially for the Pope’s 1986 visit to Singapore. Old boxes of religious relics belonging to saints of centuries past. And, lying amid all these carefully labelled historical valuables laid out in the room like an archaeologist’s trove, a wooden pole.
Plain and unremarkable, its 4-metre length has no religious significance. It never belonged to any person of importance. Indeed, its inefficiency made it a great annoyance to church members who had to use it once a year.
And yet, when it came time to clear out Singapore’s oldest Catholic church for major restoration works in 2013, and the pole was tossed into the “throw” pile, one of the volunteers protested.
Jevon Liew, affectionately known to his friends as the karang guni (rag and bone) man, believed it was as much a part of the 173-year-old church’s story as anything else.
Left: The cathedral on Queen Street before it underwent restoration. Right: The cathedral today, with works due to be completed in December 2016. (Photos: Jerome Lim, The Long and Winding Road, Lam Shushan)
As the 32-year-old tells it, on the eve of every Good Friday, volunteers at the Cathedral of the Good Shepherd like himself would use the pole to drape a huge veil over the 5-metre-high crucifix in the hall - a Catholic custom before the Easter celebrations.
With no ladder tall enough, they had to strain on tippy toes with arms stretched high, wrestling with the pole to manouevre the cloth over the cross suspended from the ceiling. The memento of their painstaking struggle now lies preserved among the artefacts in temporary storage at the cathedral’s new annex building.
“Some people may think I collect junk - but these are all interesting little bits and pieces with stories behind them,” says Mr Liew.
PLAYING SHERLOCK HOLMES WITH THE PAST
This obsession with clinging on to even the most ordinary objects sometimes perplexes those around him - especially his mother, who often grumbles that he likes to collect “trash”. But to Mr Liew, who works as an urban planner and conservation specialist, keeping these objects is a way of hoarding memories of the past and sharing it with people around him.
And he has proven to be quite the treasure hunter. For more than 10 years, he has been discovering little bits of “treasure” around the compounds of the cathedral - on which building work began in 1843 to replace the wood-and-attap chapel founded by French missionaries.
An altar boy as a teenager, Mr Liew’s interest was piqued when he was given access to the church’s back rooms, where he saw all sorts of old religious items stashed away in dusty cabinets.
Curious about what else could be lying around, he started to poke around in the dark and forgotten corners of the cathedral where no one else would go.
In one cupboard, he spotted an object covered by a cloth that had begun to disintegrate. It was a large metallic object that had turned almost completely black. Cleaned up, it was revealed to be a majestic 19th-century French monstrance (vessel for holy items) gilded in gold.
“Being curious has its advantages - you find all these unexpected things,” says Mr Liew.
Another time, he found a box full of religious paraphernalia - rosaries, prayer cards, keys, and a huge purple gemstone ring too large to fit on any normal human finger.
“I thought, ‘wasn’t that the ring that is lying inside the box in the safe?’ It's like detective work. I really like this kind of treasure-hunting, Sherlock Holmes kind of thing,” he says.
But it’s far more than just the immediate gratification of finding and identifying these objects. Mr Liew sees them as important links to facets of the past that we might otherwise forget.
CLUES IN OLD NEWSPAPERS AND BOTTLES
Mr Liew’s fear is that these once-sacred artefacts, if left scattered haphazardly with no proper archiving or safekeeping, could eventually lose their significance entirely to successive generations.
So naturally, when the cathedral - a gazetted national monument - was set to undergo renovations in 2013, Mr Liew jumped at the opportunity to be part of the technical committee that would advise the priest on decisions relating to the restoration works.
One of the first things he initiated before contractors started work, was a proper sweep of the church grounds to gather all the stray artefacts in one place, so that he could create an inventory for proper safekeeping.
At times, it was a battle to convince people that certain items were worth keeping - but he wanted to make sure that they could conserve as many meaningful old objects as possible.
On one occasion, he was clearing out some cupboards in the church with an elderly lady who was about to throw away the newspaper that was lining the shelves. He noticed that they were from the 1930s.
“I said no no no, stop! It survived the war - please make sure it survives you!”
Left: The front page of The Union Times, dated Monday, Jan 22, 1934. Right: The address of the company was 25-29 Club Street and its telephone number, 6269. (Photos: Lam Shushan)
What could you possibly do with a set of old and disintegrating newspapers, you might ask?
“From all these little things, we can learn a lot about our history. In the old days, what were people watching in the cinemas? What were they buying in the shops?” says Mr Liew.
One of the newspapers was a Chinese publication by The Union Times. Its pages included advertisements for products such as Indian hair oil, movie screenings at the Capitol Theatre, and Fraser and Neave’s beverage Sarsaparilla - what we know today as F&N’s Sarsi.
“I heard it was believed in the old days that when you're sick, you drink sarsi and you'll be well again. And this advertisement was on the front page!” Mr Liew points out.
A page from The Union Times, with advertisements for Fraser and Neave’s Sarsaparilla and movie screenings at the Capitol Theatre. (Photos: Lam Shushan)
But there was an even more exciting and significant find, as excavation works proceeded in January this year. By pure chance, contractors unearthed even more artefacts from the ground beneath the church.
It turned out that the artefacts were part of a time capsule - thought to have gone missing in earlier upgrading works - that was placed under the foundation stone of the cathedral 173 years ago. It contained 18th and 19th century merchant tokens from the British East India Company, currencies such as Spanish reals and Dutch and Portuguese coins, as well as publications of the day by the Singapore Free Press.
The newspapers served as a time-stamp of the event, while the coins from different countries could have signified an effort to bridge schisms among the various communities, he notes.
“Or, maybe there was some conflict from the different groups to say ‘hey, we should be in there too!’. Who knows - but it’s quite fun to look back in time to see what people were thinking,” Mr Lim says.
TREASURE, TREASURE EVERYWHERE...
But it’s not often you find someone in Singapore today - much less a 32-year-old - who throws himself so wholeheartedly into the past.
Indeed, Mr Liew recalls an instance when he excitedly told a priest about something he had found, only to receive in response an unenthused “Oh…”.
What others no longer want, Mr Liew sometimes goes to the extent of taking home with him. What started out as a childhood hobby of collecting stamps and coins with dad, evolved into a penchant for small antiques - and then larger ones, like furniture.
And then there are the cathedral’s outdoor stone tables and chairs that members would gather around after a service, and that were too big to stow away. So Mr Liew brought them home - much to his mother’s chagrin.
“At the end of the day I ask myself, what is the significance of that item to the people, to the community and to myself? And when the people feel that it does mean something to them again, I'll just bring it back.”
Left: The area outside the priest’s residence pre-renovation, with all the stone tables and chairs. Right: Only one table remains outside the newly restored building. (Photos: Jerome Lim, Lam Shushan)
What drives people like archaeologist Mr Lim and conservationist Mr Liew to safekeep that which many regard as old junk?
Says Mr Lim: “You may say, ‘it’s just a broken piece of glass from a soda bottle’. But in looking at the past, you get to reflect. Our role as historians and archaeologists is to help people think about their past and where they’re going in the future.”
“I think how you tell the story is very important,” Mr Liew notes. “With all these items of significance, how are you going to get Catholics and even the layman on the street to relate to them?”
On that note, the cathedral’s priests and the technical committee have agreed to set aside space for a heritage centre showcasing all the recovered artefacts.”With good storytelling, you can bring them to life,” Mr Lim says. “Get people to think about these priests who came from all over the world - what were their lives like? What made them devote their lives to god or the church? It may help them relate and reflect on their own faith.”
“The cathedral is supposed to be an oasis for people from all walks of life to just come in. You don't even need to say a little prayer, you can just sit down. To be able to find peace and serenity and refuge in the busy city - that’s very important. We hope to be able to touch the hearts of people,” he adds.
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