Storage box with Eight Immortals carving and metal hinges

This is a teak storage box with an Eight Immortals carving crafted by Teochew carpenter Tan Piak Sua (陈璧山, b. 1942-) after establishing his independent woodworking business in the 1970s. It took him one week to complete the piece.Tan entered the furniture making trade as an apprentice in 1957 at the age of 15, training under a Shanghainese carpentry 'shifu' (师父, master) at a factory near Kallang Pudding Road, from whom he learnt various skills of the trade. His training background was reflective of an early generation of crafts practitioners who sought apprenticeship under a self-sourced mentor-disciple system prior to the inception of formal vocational education in Singapore. The move to heighten technical skills and expertise amongst the workforce gained momentum from the 1960s, to meet Singapore's industrialisation demands, with the Singapore Vocational Institute being the first of its kind to specialise in craft subjects in 1963. Tan went on to establish his independent woodworking business in the 1970s, which peaked in the mid-1970s to 1980s as demand for furniture surged with the introduction of public housing and home ownership. However small cottage industries like his were gradually overtaken by increasing competition from larger-scale furniture enterprises in the market in the following decade. He wound up his carpentry business to become a hawker at a coffeeshop in 1984, eventually retiring in 2005.