The thing I keep thinking about from SHIPPED! Vessels of Taste is a hairbrush. It isn’t a royal heirloom or rare export porcelain. It’s an ordinary brush that was part of someone’s routine decades ago, and it’s on show alongside old food tins that once sat in somebody’s kitchen. Seeing everyday things like that in a gallery struck me.
The exhibition is ArCH Square’s third, and it marks the centre’s first anniversary. It runs from 31 October 2026 to 31 March 2027, and the Archaeology X ICH programme kicks off on the opening weekend of 31 October and 1 November 2026. I went to the media preview on my own. If your family can’t bring itself to throw away a single biscuit tin, this one is for you.
Kitchens Rather Than Cargo
First, a quick explainer. ArCH Square opened in November 2025 as a centre for archaeology and intangible cultural heritage (ICH). ICH covers living practices such as cooking, storytelling and craft, rather than objects in a case. This exhibition was co-created with the Museum of Food.
The idea is simple, and I like it a lot. Shipwreck ceramics are usually shown as evidence of trade. Vessels of Taste also asks what people actually did with these ceramics, bottles, jars, bowls and fragments: how they used them to store, preserve, ferment, prepare, serve and transport food.
“With SHIPPED! Vessels of Taste, we wanted to explore how vessels can tell us more than where goods travelled. They offer glimpses into how people prepared and preserved food, shared recipes and passed down culinary traditions.” The exhibition’s curator also led the curatorial tour at the preview.
Three Wrecks and Three Menus
The headline objects come from three wrecks, and each one opens a different window into a kitchen:
- Shah Muncher: the assemblage points to fermented condiments, and a jarlet from the wreck is on display.
- Temasek Wreck: these finds link particular ceramic forms to Chinese culinary traditions.
- Empress of Asia: these artefacts belong to the world of industrial food production, and a silverware spittoon from the wreck is in the show.
The Museum of Food’s section, Anyone Can Cook, brings the story closer to home. It looks at how food heritage is learnt through family kitchens and shared recipes. The loans include a Hacks sweet tin and a rice cooker pot. Putting objects like these next to shipwreck finds is the point of the whole show. A sweet tin from someone’s cupboard deserves a place in a heritage gallery too!
I tried guessing what some of the kitchen objects were used for, with mixed success. I also looked at the time capsules, which show how people back then reused glass jars and food and snack tins to hold their knick-knacks.
A Sultan Gate Surprise
My biggest surprise came from archaeologist Aaron Kao’s sharing on the Sultan Gate excavation. The team dug only two test pits, each 2m by 1m. Those two small holes have already revealed several different time periods of what people who lived and worked there were doing. I expected a dig that size to turn up a few shards and a shrug, so the amount of history in so little ground floored me.
The excavation also features in the Stratigraphy Kiosk, a digital installation about the excavation’s layers. A donation from Tencent supports it.
Membawang, Sayang and Other Kitchen Words
Storyteller Hafiz Rashid’s tour was my favourite part of the morning. His theme was food and hospitality. He explained kempunan, which he described as a spiritual affliction from an incomplete action around food: seeing something you cannot taste. The belief is still strong in Borneo, and it is why the makciks at a Hari Raya open house insist you have a bit, nanti kempunan. The etiquette follows from it: put out enough for every guest, or don’t let them see what they can’t have. Jemput makan, an invitation to eat, offered as a form of respect even when there may not be enough, spiritually lets guests partake and offsets kempunan. He also told an Orang Seletar story of a boy who became a dragon guarding the Tebrau Straits between Singapore and Johor Bahru, and Sang Nila Utama came up as well.
My favourite word of the day was membawang. Bawang is Malay for onions, and membawang became the word for aunties gossiping while they cut onions together. The word holds a whole social history, because the stories got passed around over the food prep.
The other word that stuck with me was sayang, a Malay word Singlish adopted to mean precious or sentimental. A collector’s point about old packaging explained it well. Decades ago, incomes were lower and daily necessities were harder to come by, so people felt too sayang to throw anything away. It’s the same instinct behind the reused jars and tins in the show.
The preview also included a Biscuit Tin (Time Capsule) workshop by Emily of the Museum of Food and Rebecca of My Old Skool, plus a teaser for Unarchived.
What I’d Book
The Archaeology X ICH opening weekend has three sessions:
- The Time Capsule, by the Museum of Food and By My Old School: choose an upcycled container, fill it with meaningful items and leave a note for a future finder.
- Stories in the Shards, Hafiz Rashid’s folktale tour of finds from Kampong Gelam and Singapore’s waters.
- Fermenting Plants for Colours, with Wild Dot.
If you only do one, make it Stories in the Shards. The objects are good on their own, but Hafiz is the reason they stayed with me. If you enjoyed the Malay heritage programme at last month’s Kampong Gelam Festival, his storytelling is right up your alley.
The programme carries on past the opening weekend. Parents should circle 13 and 14 March 2027 for Grandma’s Biscuit Tin, a parent-child workshop, and Ahma Takeover, where senior heritage-food practitioners talk about how they learnt to cook. More sessions run through March 2027, and from November, Unarchived adds a monthly series of tours, food experiences and lunchtime lectures. Keep an eye on Archaeology X ICH on Peatix and ArCH Square’s programmes page for details.
Who’s it for? Anyone who has ever eaten from a tiffin carrier or kept a biscuit tin of odds and ends. Hardcore maritime trade nerds may want more cargo detail than this show offers, because its focus is on people and their meals.
🗓️ Date: 31 October 2026 to 31 March 2027
📍 Location: ArCH Square
🎟️ Tickets: Opening-weekend workshops (31 October and 1 November 2026) via Archaeology X ICH on Peatix
🔗 Details: ArCH Square’s programmes page
I walked in expecting ancient pottery and walked out thinking about hairbrushes, snack tins and gossiping aunties with onions. That shift is what SHIPPED! Vessels of Taste does best. It treats the things you eat from, store things in and can’t bear to throw out as real history. Book an opening-weekend session on Peatix, and bring your own sayang stories along!
Photos by Danish Lukawski of The DANAMIC Team; additional visuals courtesy of HeritageSG.
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