Poster power: Singapore’s vintage election memorabilia in the spotlight

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SINGAPORE – While hunting down old furniture on Perak’s streets in 2022, vintage shop owner Wak Sadri stumbled upon a page of Singapore’s history. It was an issue of Petir Pictorial, the PAP’s official magazine, dated 1959, the year it scored its first election victory.

On its cover, the men in white were arranged on the steps of the then City Hall while the party’s red and blue lightning insignia bolted across a flowy cloth that draped over the building’s severe Corinthian columns. History was made – as the party has swept every Singapore election since and will seek to win its 16th election come May 3.

In its day, the magazine costs 60 cents. A year ago, Mr Sadri sold the 1959 issue for a four-figure sum. The 46-year-old vintage veteran, who runs Treasure At Home Vintage Store at Kapo Factory Building in Tai Seng, believes that serendipity is essential on his frequent acquisition trips: “You have to expect the unexpected – if you think that you’re going to get something, you are sure not to get it.”

Art deco armchairs, crowned cabinets, hand-painted store signs, teapots and trinkets line his maximalist chamber, which boasts customers like the set designers of hit drama serial Emerald Hill (2025) and cooking doyenne Violet Oon. But, of late, it is his shop’s election and political memorabilia that have received a spike in queries from interested collectors as voters feel the rush of GE2025.

The old campaign posters, like the rows which now punctuate Singapore’s roads, are designed to grab an onlooker’s attention. On how vintage and current election posters differ, Mr Sadri’s son Emyr Uzayr, 21 – also known as Wak Jr – points out the penchant in the past for a minimalist colour palette: “It’s simple but it’s loud.”

Mr Sadri brings out a set of multilingual PAP posters from the 1960s to make the point that the language used then was more poetic and impactful. The Chinese slogan was done in a melodious rhyming couplet while the English and Malay ones were pithy.

For some, these old pieces are just relics of a bygone era. For others, they are imbued with stories of Singapore’s colourful political history and visual culture, starting with the artisans and printers.

This was the case for a young man who came to the shop in 2024 and immediately trained his eyes on the bottom right-hand corner of one such poster, Mr Emyr recounts. The text reads, in capital letters, “Lithographed in Singapore by Malaya Engraving & Litho Printing Co.” The young man immediately knew it was the place where his grandfather worked, and the poster is possibly a piece his grandfather had played a part in printing.

The hallowed artefacts in Mr Sadri’s family-owned business often come alive as history’s – and the present – rotating cast of characters pass through its tight corridors.

One of Mr Sadri’s customers is Dr Tan Cheng Bock – which explains why a framed poster of the former presidential hopeful’s 2011 campaign sits in the store. Dr Tan, who is currently contesting as part of the newly formed West Coast-Jurong West GRC, had given him six signed posters.

One of these posters – a collectible from a hotly contested four-way presidential election that Dr Tan had lost by less than 10,000 votes – sits in Mr Sadri’s collection. Dr Tan was also a PAP MP for Ayer Rajah SMC from 1980 to 2006.

He is not too keen on selling that poster – as it reminds him of a certain sale he made that he regrets to this day. It was an old photograph he found in an old Toa Payoh provision shop, one of the late Mr Lee Kuan Yew when he first became prime minister in 1959: “For me, it’s sentimental because I used to work for him.”

Mr Sadri used to be part of the Police Security Command and was regularly deployed to escort the late founding prime minister in the last decades of his life, as well as other ministers. The photograph, irretrievable now, had emanated an aura that felt true to his physical presence: “We know his aura, it’s second to none. He had a mind made of – not gold – platinum.”

Mr Sadri’s poster of Singapore’s former deputy prime minister Wong Kan Seng – when he was running for the constituency of Kuo Chuan in the 1984 – attracted the attention of Mr Wong himself, who sent an employee to examine the poster. While Mr Wong did not buy the piece, Mr Sadri says one of his two copies was sold to an Australian collector.

These artefacts freeze history in a frame and offer it up for examination – and it is not just Mr Wong’s vintage spectacles in the poster. Kuo Chuan constituency, like many constituencies from the 1980s, no longer exists. With the creation of group representation constituencies (GRCs) in 1988, it was merged into Toa Payoh GRC – which also no longer exists.

Mr Emyr, currently a finance undergraduate, has learnt a thing or two about acquiring vintage items since his young days exploring Sungei Road Thieves Market with his parents and sister. Once, when he spotted a series of eight English-language Plebeian newsletters by Barisan Sosialis in a collector’s house, he played it cool: “I didn’t want to make it seem like I was eyeing it because he might just increase his price.”

Barisan Sosialis is a defunct political party formed in 1961 by the leftist faction of the PAP that was expelled following its abstention during a vote of confidence called by Mr Lee. For a low three-figure sum per issue, the inflammatory pieces were snapped up by several undergraduate students.

It all goes back to the 1955 elections, when the Rendel Constitution allowed for a majority of seats to be elected rather than appointed by the British colonial authorities.

That story is contained in a hefty tin sign – with the year 1955 printed on it – that hangs grandly from the ceiling of the shop as a statement piece.

Mr Sadri acquired the signage from a Eurasian family which collects black and white historical pieces. He says: “They said they got it from the Marshall family – but we can’t verify it, so we can only say that it is from the election period.”

He is referring to the family of David Marshall – who became Singapore’s inaugural chief minister when his left-wing Labour Front won Singapore’s first Legislative Assembly in 1955. Mr Marshall subsequently resigned from the Labour Front in 1957 and formed the Workers’ Party (WP) that same year.

There are gaps in the shop’s collection which Mr Sadri and Mr Emyr hope to remedy, such as the paucity of WP memorabilia – which Mr Emyr says are hard to find on the market. The family maintains that the business, regardless of their personal political beliefs, remains unaffiliated with political parties.

Mr Sadri also collects presidential portraits – starting with those of Singapore’s first president Yusof Ishak, who died in 1970, and first first lady Puan Noor Aishah Mohammad Salim, who died at 91 on April 22. He is missing the portraits of more recent presidents and hopes to acquire them in order to complete his display collection in store.

Most of the artefacts – such as a hand-painted PAP curtain blind celebrating the “14th year of honest effective government” dated to around 1973 – do not bear the names of their creators, which makes it harder to establish the precise provenance.

Mr Emyr says: “This is the thing about local businesses – the artists don’t have the names written on the items. It’s the opposite with Americans, who usually sign their names on posters and even furniture.”

The piece in question was sold overseas to a Hong Kong collector, like many of the shop’s historical memorabilia, but Mr Sadri is making an appeal for Singaporeans to treasure their own history: “I hope that Singaporeans will actually keep the artefacts here in Singapore. This is where they belong. This is where the story starts and sometimes ends.”

As campaign posters go up and election merchandise is being distributed, he urges people to hold on to meaningful pieces. “You should keep things. They may not sound interesting or be something that entices you now, but in 10 to 15 years, this election might have changed people’s lives.”

He quips: “One minute past is already a historical event.”

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