THOW KWANG INDUSTRY

Third-generation pottery business

A third-generation family pottery business, Thow Kwang Industry has been trying to engage different audiences to share its craft and explore ways to digitalise.

It conducts programmes at kindergartens, primary and secondary schools, as well as tours of Thow Kwang's famous dragon kiln, said second-generation owner Tan Teck Yoke, 65.

His niece, Ms Stella Tan, 29, has come on board with fresh ideas to market the company's pottery products on social media and at art exhibits and markets.

And Mr Tan's wife, Mrs Yulianti Tan, 61, has been volunteering at the Apex rehabilitation centre in Redhill, using the process of shaping clay as a form of therapy for the seniors who visit the centre.

But the heart of the company's business is still the longyao or dragon kiln, one of only two left in Singapore. It is so called because its long, hollow brick structure supposedly resembles the creature of Chinese myth.

It was Mr Tan's father who bought the kiln after he came to Singapore from Swatow, China, and sold his first pottery wares in 1965 - the year Singapore became independent.

Now, Mr Tan has plans to immortalise this pottery-making process by creating a virtual tour.

"The longyao itself is a living fossil. It records the generations this art has been passed on to, even as Singapore, a young country, has developed," he said in Mandarin.