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Thai Handicraft
Umbrella :
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Handmade umbrellas have long played a role in Thai traditional life, used either in ceremonies or, more prosaically, to protect the owner from sun and rain. Probably the most famous manufacturing center today is the little village of Bor Sang, about ten energies to the craft, just as they have for at least 200 years. The umbrellas come in all sizes, from tiny ones suitable for a child to huge ones measuring two or three meters across, and in a great variety of designs. |
Bamboo is used for the framework, which is then covered with a locally produced paper called sa. The latter, another characteristic northern handicraft, is made by a complex process from the bark of the paper mulberry and other trees and is wafer-thin but also extremely smoothed by hand during each application until it is taut and even. When the paper is dry, the decorations are painted on by hand in oil colors, with each artist specializing in a particular design: dragons, flowers, human figures, scenic views, etc. A final coat of clear lacquer is then sometimes applied to make the umbrella waterproof.
Once produced mainly for use by people in Chiang Mai and other northern centers, the umbrellas are now being made in large quantities for export and many young people are taking up the craft as a full-time occupation.
Wood Carvings :
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Though wood carvings can still be found anywhere, the pieces of fine craftsmanship like those done by craftsmen of former days are rare. Nowadays, wood-carving is a work done against time, and this results in less elaborate and less graceful products. Wishing to conserve this craft, Her Majesty the Queen has sought highly-skilled wood-carvers to teach the young, inexperienced people from the countryside, giving them an opportunity to learn from their teachers without having to worry about how to earn their living. All this is done for the preservation of perfect art works as a national heritage. |
Mostly, teak has been used for carving as, unlike nowadays, it used to grow in abundance in Thailand. Besides, it has the right quality for the purposes, being fairly soft and tough, which makes it easy to carve in various beautiful, deep and sharp patterns. Its natural wood grain is also attractive. When painted or decorated with lacquer-gilded design, teakwood can quickly absorb the solutions. Wood-carving is done in two styles bas-relief and free-standing both of which require similar steps of carving. Firstly, the carver sketches what he wants to carve on a piece of wood. Then he uses iron tools like a chisel and a hammer to cut and shape it accordingly. The work requires great care and patience as damage can easily occur. The next step is to carve smaller, more detailed patterns with accordingly smaller tools. The completely-carved wood may then be painted, lacquered or gilded as desired.
Dolls :
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The making of dolls of one kind or another is a handicraft in just about every country, and this is true of Thailand as well. Not all of them are intended for the amusement of children, however; on the contrary, many can be looked upon as exquisite works of art and are valued as such. |
This artistic quality is evident in the charming " palace dolls," so called because in ancient times the ladies of the royal palace were noted for their skill at painting these tiny figures made of fired clay. Just about every aspect of Thai culture is reflected in the little dolls, from cooking to boxing, and each detail is meticulously rendered in miniature.
As in the case of a number of other crafts, the making of palace dolls suffered a decline in the present century. In recent years, however, it has undergone a successful revival under the auspices of Her Majesty Queen Sirikit's SUPPORT programme. Numerous households now make them in the central province of Ang Thong, where high-quality clay is abundant, and collecting them has once more become popular.
Less traditional but also popular with collectors are handmade dolls in native costumes ranging from those of the Thai classical dance to those of the northern hill tribe people. Thisis a comparatively new handicraft, having been started only around 30 years ago in Bangkok, but it has become so familiar to Thais as well as tourists that to many it seems a part of the national culture. Many haours of painstaking work are required to produce one of these beautifully garbed figures, to stuff and sew the cloth body and to apply the often intricate details to the costumes, which are exact replicas of the real thing. These dolls originated with Khunying Tongkorn Chandavimol, who became familiar iwth the process during a stay in Japan, and for years they were made only in her Bangkok home; now other companies produce them as well, to meet the growing demand.
Reed / Mats :
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A handsome handicraft found throughout most of Thailand is produced by skillfully plainting reeds, strips of palm leaf, or some other easily available local plant. The supple mats made by this process- -weaving without a loom, as one authority calls it- -are widely used in Thai homes, from the simplest to the most also now being made into shopping bags, place mats, and decorative wall hangings. |
One popular kind of Thai mat is made from a kind of reed known as Kachud, which grows plentifully in the southern swamps. After the reeds are harvested, they are steeped in mud, which toughens them and prevents them from becoming brittle. They are then dried in the sun for a time and pounded flat, after which they are ready to be dyed and woven into mats of various sizes and patterns.
Other mats are produced in different parts of Thailand, most notably in the eastern province of Chanthaburi. Durable as well as attractive, they are plaited entirely by hand with an intricacy that makes the best resemble finely woven fabrics.
Pottery :
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Clay is probably the most abundant, cheap, and easily obtainable material in the world, " Says one writer on Southeast Asian crafts ". It is easy to prepare and does not require a great deal of technological knowledge to use. It has been one of mankind's earliest materials that was fashioned for fundamental human needs. |
Handsome pots dating back more than 6,000 years have been found at Ban Chiang, in northeastern Thailand, and the art of shaping and firing clay has continued to the present day. Simple earthenware vessels are still used for cooking and storage; more sophisticated glazed pottery is also being produced by methods introduced from China 700 years ago.
Almost every region of the country has its own traditional pottery. The north, for example, makes fine low-fired pots and water jugs, lightly glazed with terra cotta and oil to make them capable of holding liquids; by northern custom, one of these pots is placed outside most temples and private homes so that thirsty strangers can stop and refresh themselves. Dark-brown pottery in a wide variety of shapes, from flowers pots to fanciful animals, is produced at kilns near the northeastern city of Nakhon Ratchasima. Ratchaburi, east of Bangkok, is noted for its beautiful decorated water storage jars, yellowish-green in color and adorned with dragons and swirling floral motifs.
The art of making delicate, blue-green celadon began at the end of the 13th century, when King Ramkamhaeng the Great of Sukhothai brought 300 Chinese potters to his kingdom. Within a short time the high-fired stoneware was being traded throughout Southeast Asia, all the way to the Phillippines and Indonesia.
The celadon industry declined with Sukhothai, but has been revived in recent years in the northern city of Chiang Mai. The process is still the same as in ancient tiems, using a clear glaze made from feldspar, limestone, ash, and a small amount of red clay. The wood used for firing the kilns comes from a small jungle tree that grows north of Chiang Mai, the ash of which is supposed to help impart the typical celadon colour. Several companies are now making the stoneware, which is reaching an even wider circle of admirers than its Sukhothai prototype.
Toy :
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In every culture, toys are an important part of childhood, and Thailand is no exception. Many Thai toys are also beautiful handicrafts that are still made today just as they were centuries ago. |
One example is the graceful mobile known in Thai as pla tappien, a popular souvenir with many tourists who visit the country. The fish that comprise the mobile are made of plaited dry palm leaves, often painted in bright colors; traditionally, the pla tappien is hung above a cradle so that a baby can watch it slowly turning in the breeze.
Then there are kites, which come in a vast variety of shapes and sizes and can be seen everywhere in the sky during the kite season from February to April. Actually, some Thai kites are considerably more than mere toys in both their size and the skill required to fly them. This is particularly true of those used in kite fighting, a sport thought to have been in existence since the Sukhothai period. It involves lofty battles between the five-pointed "male" kites, called chula--which may be up to six feet in diameter--and the smaller, diamond-shaped females, called pakpao. The kites have a framework of bamboo, carefully rounded and smoothed, covered with tough, handmade sa paper.
A delightful small toy in rural areas is the jakkajan, or cicada, made out of clay and bamboo. Tied with cotton to a bamboo handle, these make a shrill, chattering sound when whirled, exactly like that of a real cicada. Other highly realistic-looking insects are made of defly plaited strips of bamboo or palm leaf.
Another toy found in many homes are papier-mache banks in the shape of animals. Traditionlly these were animals of the twelve-year cycle and a child was given one in the likeness of his birth-year animal, but today the brightly-coloured figures are made in a variety of other forms as well.
Nielloware :
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Niello is an art of ornamenting metal objects much practised in the Middle ages. The lines of a design are cut in the metal, and filled up with a black lead alloy which gives effect to the intaglio picture. |
The art is apparent both in Europe, and Iran, India and Thailand in Asia. It appears that the oldest evidence of the art is Roman, but the work is not exactly similar to that of the Thai niello, instead it is not unlike black enamel work and is called Tula silver. The Thai niello work resembles those from Persia and India and it can perhaps be concluded that the skills in these countries originated from the same source though have developed independently according to each country's culture and taste.
Originally the designs on silver niello were distinct with sufficient space for filling-in of the black lead mixture to give bold effect to the intaglio patterns. Later, however, people preferred a denser pattern, and there was also a development of a combined silver and gold nielloware. The totally gold niello came after that.
The silver and gold combination work is primarily silver niello with parts of the designs plated with gold. The plating is by the classical process of painting the patterns with a gold-mercury paste and subliming the mercury with a hot flame leaving only a plating of gold on the patterns.
For the totally gold niello, the material for the object can be either gold or silver. If it is silver, the designs can be completely gold plated instead of partially as in the gold-silver combination work. A nielloware is generally made of silver or gold since the lead alloy will not adhere to other metals
Leather Carving :
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The Shadow Play is a distinctively Thai theatrical entertainment from the Ayutthaya Period for which shadows are cast onto a white screen. Alternatively, the puppet holders pranced about in front of an illuminated screen. |
There were therefore two kinds of leather cutouts, one for day-time use, the other for the night-time when a wood fire cast its light. The night cutouts are black ornament with white spacers. Day-time leather cutouts are painted in various colours and even sometimes gilded as well, using exactly the same painter's technique as mural painting on white plaster walls.
The shadow Play has become less popular and the art of making leather cutouts has been on a steady decline. Her Majesty the Queen, therefore, tried to preserve this ancient art by launching a course on sculping leather cutouts- the large ones are favoured for home decorations while the small ones are popular among foreign visitors as souvenirs from Thailand.
Mather of Pearl inlay :
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The use of mother-of-pearl to adorn various objects has a long history in Thailand. Stucco pieces studded with bits of shell have been found at monuments dating back to the Dvaravati period (6th to 11th centuries), and some form of the art may have existed even before along the coastal regions. |
But these early efforts were crude compared with the magnificent works achieved by techniques perfected in the late Ayutthaya and early Bangkok periods, when temple doors and windows, manuscript boxes, alms bowls, and numerous other items were splendidly decorated by the painstaking process the Thais call krueng
mook.
The craft continues to thrive today in the production of exquistely detailed furniture, mirror frames, boxes, and trays that are the pride of many owners both in Thailand and abroad.
Many seashells fall into the general category of mother-of-pearl, but the most popular in Thailand is the hoi fai, or flame snail, from the Gulf of Thailand, which has a particularly beautiful irridescence. The outer surface of this shell is removed with a special knife and the white inner shell is cut into thin, fairly flat pieces, each about two and a half centimeters long.
The pieces are honed until smooth and shiny and then usually glued onto smooth, flat pieces of thin wood. The design,. if simple, is traced directly onto the shell surface; for more complex ones, tracing paper with the pattern drawn on it is glued to the shell. A special curved bow saw is used to cut the mother-of-pearl, after which it is carefully removed from the wood and the cut edges smoothed with a hand file to ensure that they will fit tightly together.
If the design was sketched directly onto the shell, the pieces are pasted in their proper places on the tracing paper, which is then pressed, paper side up, on the sticky, newly lacquered surface of the item being decorated. After the paper has been moistened and peeled off, the surface is rubbed with a hard stone to restore its shine and defective patches repaired with more lacquer; there is then another polishing and a final coat of clear varnish.
The highest quality mother-of-pearl work requires both time and an amazing amount of patience. Evidence of this can been seen in the doors and windows of the chapel at Bangkok's Wat Ratchabophit, on which one square metre contains approximately 20,000 tiny pieces of shell.
To quote one authority on the art, "Though technique and materials may differ slightly from those used in the past, the magnificent patience and attention to detail required remain the same and result in lovely pieces which inspire awe in the admiring beholder".
Bamboo Baskestry :
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Bamboo grows wild throughout Thailand, and for centuries its tough, pliable stalks have been deftly woven into a wide variety of objects that combine utility with often remarkable artistic expression. Every country hosehold contains examples of these, used in almost every aspect of daily life. As one writer on the subject has noted, "Historically, the patterns and shapes of the weaving reveral the ancestral customs and habits of an ordinary, forgotten people. |
Each intricately woven basket has its own particular shape and function. The techniques, ranging from the delicate and graceful to the rustic and bold, were born rural necessity and handed down from generation to generation".
No brief account could encompass all the different baskets produced in Thailand, but certain types are repeated over and over, in nearly every part of the country. One of hte most common is the sum pla, or fish trap, an elegant, ingenious device for catching fish in the shallow waters along the edge of a rice field. Once caught, the fish are put for safekeeping in another, tightly woven basket called a khong, which rests on four supports and has a narrow opening at the top; some khongs are also fitted with a cone-shaped insert made of bamboo to keep the fish from jumping out.
Yet another familiar basket is the multi-purpose grajad, used for carrying rice or other produce. This is shallow and has a wide mouth which is often adorned with decorative edging- -sometimes in a style quaintly called "take the girl by the hand," meaning that the closely interlocked weaving leads the eye around the rim. A flatter version of this basket, called grajad mon, is commonly carried on a pole or on the hip.
Glutinous rice is staple food in both the north and the northeast, and farmers carry a supply of it with them for lunch when they go to work in the fields. A wide range of baskets have been devised for the purpose, always covered and footed, with a cord attached so that it can be easily carried over the shoulder. Many of these have handsome geometric designs in darkers in darker bamboo woven into them.
There are also special baskets for measuring and carrying coconuts, for winnowing rice, for transporting pigs to market, for rearing silkworms, for storing clothes and other possessions, for packaging charcoal- -in brief, for just about every need that might arise. All, therefore, are basically utilitarian; but in beauty of workmanship and design many also deserve to be elevated to the category of true folk art.
Khit Bamboo Basketry :
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Basket-weaving with khit patterns is part of the cultural heritage of the Northeast. It is a handicraft that requires great skill and patience, yet truly skilled craftsmen are almost non-existent. Therefore, Srinakarinwirot University, Mahasarakham Campus, proposed its assistance to the Foundation for its assistance in conserving the art. It found only one family in Kalasin Province that could craft khit baskets from bamboo. |
The family willingly accepted the request as they would have an opportunity to pass on this national heritage. Originally, there were only a few types of khit baskets and containers, but through Her Majesty the Queen's promotion, a few more khit items like vases and handbags have been made for distribution. Khit basket-weaving involves many complicated steps, beginning with finding suitable bamboo or phai rai and then leaving it to dry. Afterwards, the bamboo is split into tiny strips, part of which is dyed to make woven patterns. The rest is left in its natural cream colour. Some of the bamboo, which can be of the tong variety, is cut into bigger pieces to form the frame. The dyed and undyed tiny strips are then interwoven within the shaped structure to create the desired khit pattern. Thin strips of rattan are used to reinforce the item's rim and to make its handle. This handicraft represents fine, impressive artistry of which Thai people can be pround. At present, young members of the Foundation are incredibly capable of producing khit baskets and other items and through them this Thai art treasure may continue for a long time to come.
Yan Lipao :
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One species of vine grows abundantly in the wild in the South of Thailand. The strength and durability of its fibre makes it and ideal material for basketry. The vine is called "Yan Lipao". |
Our Thai ancestors, as late as those in the early Ratanakosin Period, knew how to weave Yan Lipao into various household articles, including betel bowls, trays and betel baskets. Some of these articles still remain, in good condition, to the present day, attesting to the durability of the material. Moreover, woven with great patience and care, a Yan Lipao article will be as beautiful as any artistic object.
The use of Yan Lipao reportedly began in the South where the vine is a native plant. Woven Yan Lipao articles have also been found in great numbers in the area of Nakhon Si Thammarat Province. Hence the assumption that the art during the early Rattanakosin Period, and its popularity spread to Bangkok during the reign of King Chulalongkorn. The art was further developed by adding precious metal or material as decorative parts. There were Yan Lipao betel baskets decorated with gold, alloy of gold, silver and copper, silver and ivory. Such articles were popularity of Yan Lipao gradually waned and, almost a century later, the know-how would have been lost had it not been for the sagacity and good artistic taste of Her Majesty the Queen. She considered it a cultural heritage that should by no means be left to extinction. She believed the irresistible attractiveness of Yan Lipao basketry would make it a profitable supplementary occupation for the people in the areas where the plants grow in abundance. Yan Lipao weaving, indeed, involves great efforts. One has to go deep into the forest to look for Yan Lipao vines of not less than an arm's length, and not too young to dry in the shade. Properly dried strings have to be trimmed or smoothed out before using. Despite all the difficulties, Her Majesty was sure that the ingenuity which runs in the blood of the Thai people would see them through. Those few people who had some knowledge about the art were rounded up to teach the know - how to members of the SUPPORT Foundation. A decade later, the almost-lost art has been successfully revived. Yan Lipao basketry is popular both in the country and abroad. This is the one handicraft that has become a stable source of income, bringing new life to and upgrading the quality of life of a great number of Thai people and practically fulfilled Her Majesty's every wish.
Source : Assumption
University
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