With its contents still sealed inside, the packaging of gold thread bears the following marks, ‘Kalubhai’, ‘Fine Gold Thread’, ‘India’, ‘On cotton’, and ‘S.9 ½’.There seems to be little recorded in the statistical accounts of the supply of gold thread from India to the Straits Settlements in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.Examples in this group demonstrate the variety of colours, thread and bead types available to embroiderers in Penang and Singapore. Gold and silver threads were imported into Singapore in the second half of the 19th century, of which over half of the imported threads were retained for domestic consumption.
