My research investigates the history and art of the printed book, and examines calligraphy, lithography, typography, binding, and printing technology. I am particularly interested in technologies of composition and printing, and how they historically acted as ‘enablers’ for individuals, communities and organisations. This interest moves in two parallel streams: (1) 19th-century Muslim lithographic printers in the Malay archipelago; their networks, artefacts, printing techniques, and their interactions with the colonial state and missionaries, (2) political printing by the militant press and the radical-left during Singapore’s decolonization.

Notes on the above image: Colophon of ‘Hikayat Sultan Abdul Muluk, Raja di negeri Babari, (Epic of Sultan Abdul Muluk, King of Barbary)’, 1874. Having fully adopted lithography as the method par excellence for reproducing Jawi text, the 1870s was when the Muslim lithographic printing trade began to experience accelerated growth. This edition was copied by Muhammad Sadik, and lithographed by Haji Abdul Majid and Haji Ishak in Singapore. The epic of Sultan Abdul Muluk was also one of the most popular lithographed texts that was in wide circulation in the Archipelago during the late nineteenth-century. (Page dimensions: 200 × 155mm) Courtesy of The British Library.