THERE are namecards. And then, there is Lai Kui Fang's. It is a 45cm-long, 10-sided foldable namecard crammed with titles, awards and accolades.

The painter and sculptor's card is also printed in both English and Mandarin, all for the convenience of his business contacts and collectors.

The multi-sided card contains his entire CV - quite a task when he reveals that his CV takes up more than 20 A4 pages.

It cost him $700 to whittle this down and design the card. He spent a further $400 to print 2,000 pieces.

He explains: 'If the client wants to know your background and what awards you've got, you can't give him your biography.

'A namecard's easier to hand out.'

And it is some biography. Achievements include being an official copyist for masterpieces of the Louvre Museum, and being a recipient of numerous scholarships from the French and Italian governments.

He says with a laugh: 'Everyone sees my namecard and says it's worthy of a Guinness record.'

He changes his namecards every five years, editing the text and inserting new awards and prizes.

The 71-year-old recently received the Knight in the National Order of Merit from the French government and plans to update his namecard soon.

He started with a standard two-sided namecard in the 1970s. He subsequently added more information onto it, expanding it to four sides and eventually ended up with a foldable, 10-sided namecard a few years ago.

He says: 'A biography is so heavy. A client will take it, throw it aside and forget about it. With the namecard, he can go home and still take a look at it easily.'

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