two dragons at lorong tawas

i have always had the impression that there was only one dragon kiln left on the whole island - the one at thow kwang pottery. today, i discovered another dragon, nestling further inside the track of lorong tawas. it is located at 97l lorong tawas and it is referred to as the jalan bahar clay studios. according to one source, there used to be three dragon kilns in singapore. the defunct one used to be somewhere in the yio chu kang area. it was called the sam mui kwang dragon kiln.

checking on its history, i found out that this dragon kiln was started in 1958 as the guan huat dragon kiln. its dimensions are identitical to the one at thow kwang, that is, 43m long, 2.2m high and 2.5m wide. today, when we visited, the caretaker of the place, switched on the lights in the tunnel for us to get a better idea of how it was like inside the bowel of the dragon.




when renowned singapore potter iskandar jalil was compelled to stop working from home because some neighbour complained that the huge gas tanks installed in his house were a fire hazard, he moved to jbcs (jalan bahar clay studios) to carry on his pottery work. he has since moved back home after some engineers from exxon helped him to modify the gas tanks so that they would meet the requirements for home use.

unlike thow kwang which has on display and for sale a very huge collection of pottery and porcelain wares, the jbcs does not seem to be into sales of finished products.

if you have children, they will definitely prefer thow kwang pottery because there are children's toys and other things that will interest them. however, not all the artifacts and items on sale at thow kwang are their own products. there are also some antique stuff and some creative pieces of art works.

other attractions at thow kwang, where you can spend a whole morning exploring it, include a pond, a tree-house (?) and pottery pieces done by school children.