Peranakan jewellery is one of the oldest continuous design traditions in Singapore fine jewellery, with motifs and craft techniques going back several centuries. It is also one of the most actively evolving. Across the past two decades, Singapore jewellers have been reinterpreting the Peranakan tradition for contemporary wearers, in ways that preserve cultural meaning while updating the pieces for modern life.
This article looks at what counts as modern Peranakan design, how the traditional motifs are being reinterpreted, and where the tradition appears to be going next.
What Counts as Modern Peranakan Design
There is no single definition of modern Peranakan design, but a few principles are widely shared across contemporary Singapore Peranakan-inspired collections.
The motif vocabulary is preserved. Modern Peranakan pieces continue to use the traditional motif vocabulary: the peony, phoenix, butterfly, fan, lotus, and bamboo all appear in contemporary pieces just as they did in nineteenth-century jewellery. The meanings carry forward. What changes is how the motifs are rendered in metal.
The cultural depth is retained. Modern Peranakan-inspired pieces are not generic floral or geometric pieces with vaguely Peranakan styling. They reference the tradition specifically, with motif choice, gemstone selection, and design language that reads as Peranakan to anyone familiar with the source vocabulary.
Wearability is updated for daily life. Traditional Peranakan jewellery was often built for ceremonial occasions, with elaborate scale, complex fastening, and design choices that made the pieces hard to wear outside formal contexts. Modern Peranakan pieces are scaled and finished for daily wear, with proportions that work with contemporary clothing, fastenings that work for the modern wearer, and details that read equally in office wear and occasion wear.
Material choices have evolved. Where traditional Peranakan jewellery was predominantly 22K and 24K yellow gold with intan diamonds and traditional gemstones, modern Peranakan-inspired pieces also use 18K gold for gem-set work (which holds modern brilliant-cut diamonds and gemstones more securely), mixed gold colours (yellow, white, rose), and a wider range of contemporary gemstones.
Pieces are designed for both single and set wear. Traditional Peranakan jewellery was strongly oriented to coordinated set wear, with multiple matching pieces worn together at formal occasions. Modern Peranakan design retains the set-building tradition but also designs each piece to read well on its own, recognising that the modern wearer often layers a single Peranakan-inspired piece into otherwise contemporary jewellery.
How Traditional Motifs Are Being Reinterpreted
The motifs themselves haven't changed. What has changed is how they're brought into metal in 2026 versus how they were brought into metal in 1906.
Scale. Traditional kerosang sets, statement pendants, and elaborate hairpins were often large in scale, sized for the formal Nyonya silhouette and for ceremonial occasions. Modern Peranakan pendants and earrings tend to be smaller in scale, sized for daily wear with contemporary necklines and dress styles. The motif language stays the same; the canvas shrinks.
Proportion and structure. Traditional pieces often combined multiple motifs in complex composition, with floral surrounds, secondary forms, and detailed edge-work. Modern Peranakan design tends toward clearer compositions, with one motif allowed to carry the visual centre and surrounding work simplified to support rather than compete with it. This change makes the pieces read more clearly at glance, which matters for casual everyday wear.
Three-dimensional form. Traditional Peranakan jewellery was often built as relatively flat compositions with the motif worked across the surface. Contemporary designers, including the Poh Heng team behind the Legacy® Fan Series, are using more dimensional form, with motifs rendered as sculptural elements that catch light from different angles. The fan motif particularly suits this dimensional treatment because the fold geometry of an origami fan translates naturally into three-dimensional metalwork.
Mixed metals and gold colours. Traditional Peranakan jewellery was overwhelmingly yellow gold. Modern Peranakan pieces use white gold for diamond settings, rose gold for warm contemporary feel, and yellow gold for traditional resonance, sometimes combining two or three gold colours within a single piece. The Legacy® Fan Series, for instance, uses 18K yellow gold for the lapis lazuli pieces, 18K rose gold for the mother of pearl pieces, and combined 18K yellow and white gold for the yellow sapphire pieces.
New gemstones, traditional logic. Modern Peranakan-inspired pieces use gemstones that were rare or unavailable in traditional pieces (Golden South Sea pearl, modern brilliant-cut diamonds, tanzanite, and others) while applying the traditional Peranakan logic of meaningful stone selection. The choice of stone is still tied to its cultural and symbolic meaning, not just its visual fit.
New Pieces, Old Traditions
Contemporary Peranakan jewellery in Singapore is being made by a range of established and emerging brands. The tradition is no longer being preserved by a small number of specialist craftspeople; it is being actively reinterpreted by mainstream Singapore fine jewellery houses, with new collections launching regularly.
Poh Heng's Legacy® collection is the brand's dedicated Peranakan heritage line, sitting alongside contemporary Peranakan-inspired work from other Singapore jewellers. The recently launched Legacy® Fan Series is the brand's most ambitious contribution to this contemporary scene, with eleven pieces built around the fan motif across lapis lazuli, pearl, sapphire, and mother of pearl variants.
What is distinctive about the current moment is the cultural confidence with which Singapore Peranakan-inspired jewellery is being designed. Pieces are no longer being made as nostalgic copies of historical pieces. They are being made as new fine jewellery, with the Peranakan tradition as their starting point and contemporary design thinking as the engine of evolution.
The Legacy® Fan Series as a Case Study
The Legacy® Fan Series shows several of the modern Peranakan design principles in operation.
Motif preservation, with cultural depth. The fan motif is drawn directly from the traditional Peranakan vocabulary, where it has appeared alongside the peony, phoenix, and butterfly for generations. The collection makes the fan the focus rather than treating it as one element among many, which gives the pieces a clear identity while keeping them rooted in the source tradition.
Cross-cultural reference. The fan also draws on Chinese scholarly tradition and Japanese origami, giving the collection a layered cultural reference that traditional Peranakan jewellery rarely articulated as deliberately. This cross-cultural framing is one of the things that distinguishes modern Peranakan design from straightforward historical reproduction.
Wearability for daily and ceremonial use. Pieces are scaled and finished to work with both kebaya and contemporary dress, with the same piece reading appropriately in office wear, occasion wear, and traditional dress contexts. This is exactly the design brief of modern Peranakan jewellery: a piece that honours the heritage without locking the wearer into a specific occasion category.
Material and gemstone choices that honour tradition while expanding it. The collection uses 22K gold for the plain Fan pieces (continuing the traditional high-purity gold expression) and 18K gold for the gem-set pieces (using the more structural purity for the secure setting of precious gemstones). The four hero gemstones each connect to different strands of the Peranakan tradition.
For the full design story behind the Legacy® Fan Series, see the Fan motif article and the cross-cultural inspiration piece.
Where the Tradition Goes Next
Several trends look likely to shape the next decade of Peranakan jewellery in Singapore.
Continued wearability expansion. The shift toward daily-wear Peranakan jewellery is likely to continue, with more pieces designed for office and casual contexts as well as ceremonial occasions. This expands the audience for the tradition without diluting its specificity.
New gemstone exploration. The Peranakan tradition has always incorporated new materials when they became culturally meaningful. The next decade is likely to see further exploration of coloured gemstones, including stones with cultural resonance for Singapore's other communities, broadening the tradition's reach while keeping it culturally specific.
Cross-cultural narrative deepening. The framing of Peranakan jewellery as a cross-cultural tradition (rather than as a Chinese subset) is likely to deepen. The Legacy® Fan Series is part of this shift, articulating cross-cultural reference more deliberately than most historical pieces did.
Heritage and contemporary craft co-existing. The most successful modern Peranakan brands are likely to maintain both their heritage credentials (continuous family ownership, established craft, hallmarking under Singapore Standard SS581:2020) and their contemporary design output. Poh Heng's seventy-eight years of continuous family operation provides exactly this combination.
Explore the Poh Heng Legacy® collection →
View the 22K gold collection →