A New Appreciation of Time, History & Culture with SCENE SHANG Awaits You at Raffles Hotel Arcade
BY SCENE SHANG
AFTER ALMOST A YEAR IN THE MAKING, we’ve finally opened the doors to our Raffles Hotel store to welcome you.
Read on to find out the inspiration behind our new store and the new experiences that await you.
TIME
We were excited as new occupants called forth to be part of the tremendously long and glorious history of Singapore’s finest grand dame - Raffles Hotel.
Raffles Hotel, founded in 1887, was the first hotel in the region to have electric lights. Keeper of an illustrious history, as well as having hosted the likes of celebrities and royalty, today the hotel has been gazetted as a national monument.
To express the concept of time, we imagined what the space would have looked like if left to nature to age and take over. Working with artists, the walls were painted to create an aged mossy patina and also embedded into the patina are old Shanghai Calendar Girl posters from my personal collection, coupled with a few of SCENE SHANG’s very own advertisement poster artworks. Creepers, figs and were also added to the interior walls to suggest that nature has taken over with time.
We also wanted to show that we were new in the space and imagined our shop as a respectful, gentle and new inhabitant of the space - where the aged walls touched our newly laid wood floor, the glow of lights emanate where the old & new meet.
HISTORY & CULTURE
Art Deco tiles on the floors of foyer of our apartment building in Shanghai, where we first started SCENE SHANG.
Stepping into the main entrance of the store, vintage Art Deco tiles that we specially sourced from Shanghai grace the floor. A mosaic made of small hexagons (a shape valued in Asian cultures for their stability and harmony) in classic black and white, forming abstract plum flowers (a symbol valued by Asian cultures for the strength and beauty). These tiles were the very same type of tiles that used to greet us right in the foyer of our Art Deco apartment block which we lived in almost 5 years ago now, when we were just starting to build SCENE SHANG.
Along the walls are lined with specially sourced vintage wood trim, a subtle suggestion of the meeting of East & West by pairing classic western style leaf motif mouldings with the repeated geometric Chinese Great Wall style links.
New Offerings
In our new Raffles Hotel store, you can expect to find more inspiring Asian contemporary designs.
Most furniture and homeware pieces are limited edition pieces only available at our Raffles Hotel store and use the finest of materials such as rare marbles from the personal marble supplier to sultans as well as leather used by the same leather producers that supply to the finest French luxury brands.
A selection of fine homeware such as these hand painted porcelain vases by Middle Kingdom as well as console tables made from rare marbles such as this Italian Verde Fantasia, with expressive grains that resemble rivers and natural landscapes.
SCENE SHANG Classics like the SHANG System (Larry Peh x SCENE SHANG edition) and THE MAVERICK Armchair (Cream) in limited editions are also exclusively available in our Raffles Hotel Store.
You will also be enthralled by even more intricate artworks and highly collectible artworks and objets de art.
To make your experience even more special, our Raffles Hotel store will also offer exclusive monogramming services so that you can personalise your furniture, homeware or gifts with your name or engrave a blessing or well-wishing message to make your gifts even more meaningful.
Above all, as with our Flagship Store, our Raffles Hotel store is a destination for you to experience a new appreciation of time, history and culture.
See you there,
Jessica
Co-Founder | SCENE SHANG
Come experience a new appreciation of time, history & culture at SCENE SHANG Raffles Hotel.