The Garaj Mahal

The Pickers is a TV show about two antique dealers who drive across the US looking for cool stuff for their store. Their next stop should be Singapore and “The Garaj Mahal”, an amazing collection of carefully curated antiques, vehicles, signs and “junk”, right here in the Little Red Dot.

- Melinda Murphy

“I’m not really a collector, just a bad seller,” says Kevin White. “People ask if things are for sale and I say ‘Nah’; I hate putting a price on anything for fear of seeing it walk out the door.”

When Kevin first arrived in Singapore back in 1988, he was disturbed to see so much of the nation’s old heritage meeting the wrecking ball. He set out to save artefacts that reminded him of old Singapore – and so he bought his first enamel sign. His wife told him, “Okay, hang it in the bathroom.”

Signs of the times

Within six months, he had about ten old signs covering the walls. The collection started to grow, so much so that three garage ports were built, then two more, and yet one more again. Now? All six of them are bulging with stuff from yesteryear, things that make Kevin smile. And yes, he has saved bits of old Singapore like he first set out to do. He estimates about 40 percent of what he has comes from “old Malaya”.

“The signs remind me of a bygone era that I kind of wish I’d grown up in, the 30s to 70s. I specialise in mechanical things that don’t work, and signs that have multiple local languages. I love signs with grammatical or spelling mistakes. If my antique friends or ‘runners’ find a sign like that, they always bring it to me first. I like looking at the signs, imagining people at a café, drinking tea around them.”

Kevin’s signs have come from all over Asia. He used to travel to Burma where there were a few junk shops that specialised in enamel signs – shops which have since disappeared. Among his favourites are a couple with interesting twists on English: “Please do not sit in the shop idealing” and “Speciel Maker of Fancy Coffins”.