This bench is elegantly decorated with floral as well as geometric motifs on the back, armrests, and apron. Such benches were often acquired or commissioned in pairs for Straits Chinese households, where they were placed facing each other on opposite sides of a room or hall. Such settees were also called pak ee by Peranakan Chinese in Singapore and Malacca, perhaps a corruption of the Hokkien term for ‘wall chair’ which is piak ee. Blackwood furniture inlaid with mother-of-pearl decoration was popular among the Chinese diasporic communities in Southeast Asia.
