by Jim Goodman
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| street in Bosang village |
As with any modern city,
traditional handicrafts in Chiang Mai are no longer an essential part of
people’s everyday lives. Rather
than store things in fancy ceramic pots or baskets of split bamboo, folks use
containers of rubber-plastic made in big factories. Looms are no longer part of a typical household’s furniture,
for people don’t make their own clothes but buy them ready-made in the market. And children play with plastic toys now
instead of the traditional ones of wood or clay.
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| making umbrellas in Bosang |
Yet the craft traditions have
not died out, nor are they likely to in the near future. Chiang Mai people have a strong sense
of cultural awareness and a small, but important percentage of the residents
will continue to patronize traditional crafts for the sake of preserving local
culture. Moreover, tourism has
provided a new market and every visitor’s itinerary includes excursions to nearby
villages long famous for handicrafts production—Bosang for umbrellas, Hangdong
for woodcrafts, Muang Kung for pottery.
The most popular trip is to
Sankamphaeng, about 15 km east of the city, along a road studded with craft
factories and shops of all kinds—ceramics, lacquer ware, silver jewelry, silk,
wood carvings and paper products.
Bosang village, just over halfway to Sankamphaeng, is the most
attractive spot. Residents produce
their own saa paper, from mulberry
bark, to make umbrellas, fans and paper lanterns.
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| painting a paper fan |
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| extracting thread from a silk cocoon |
The village lies on the north
side of the Sankamphaeng road. Many shop houses on the main street sport decorations of colorful
umbrellas and paper lanterns and umbrella gates mark the entrances to the side
streets. Just inside Bosang’s
entry gate is its umbrella production center, the main destination for the tour
buses. It features a huge store
selling products from Bosang and the vicinity, like fans and umbrellas of all
sizes and the paper lanterns popular at Loy Krathong time, while back behind
the merchandise stalls sit the workers at their crafts.
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| winding the thread into loops |
Both men and women work at
putting the tops on the umbrella sticks, but the fan painters are all
male. They sit at small stalls in
front of a couple dozen designs. The
tourist chooses a fan and a design and the painter then paints that design on
the fan while the customer watches.
When finished, he dries it with a hair-drier and it’s ready for
immediate use.
In addition to Bosang, a
proper Sankamphaeng tour will take people to one of the major silk production
centers, such as the Shinawatra factory or, closer to the super highway, the
Thai Silk Village. For its feel
and its luster, silk is the luxury fabric, the favorite of upper classes in
Asia since ancient times. Visitors
can marvel at the showroom stocks of bolts of silk cloth in every conceivable
color. They can also observe some
of the steps involved in making the cloth.
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| young weaver, Thai Silk Village |
The process has hardly changed
in four thousand years. It begins
when a tiny black caterpillar emerges from a silkworm egg and begins eating
mulberry leaves. It soon gets
bigger and bigger and then retires to spin a cocoon of silk thread around
itself. Workers take bunches of
these cocoons, toss them in a pot of boiling water and use a stick to tease the
thread from the cocoons, which is wound into a ball. Then they convert the balls into loops with a winding wheel,
so that they can be dyed.
Nowadays they use chemical
dyes, which besides providing a greater range of colors, are easier to
use. The dye dissolves in the dye
bath, whereas with natural dyes there was always the problem of tiny pieces of
plant material sticking to the threads.
Silk absorbs dyes much better than cotton, with stronger and brighter
hues.
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| celadon ware, Mengrai Kilns |
The next stop is to wind out
the warp threads to the intended length of the cloth. When this is done every other thread has to be separated by
heddles and the whole lot inserted through the row of openings in the reed, to
keep them separate and untangled, and tied to the end stick. This is the most laborious part of the
work. The rest of the warp threads
are tied around a drum and the weaving can begin.
This is not a very quick
operation, either. Every other
heddle is connected to one of the two foot pedals and the remainder to the
other pedal. The weaver depresses
one pedal to create an opening in the warp threads, then tosses a shuttle of
weft thread through it. She then
draws the reed towards her a few times to knock the weft thread into place,
depresses the other foot pedal to create a new opening and repeats the
process. It’s slow work and
sometimes threads break and have to be retied, but a diligent weaver could
produce two meters or more in a day.
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| celadon worker, Sankamphaeng |
In the past weaving was much
more common. Nearly every house
had a loom, for people produced cloth to make their own clothes. With the availability of ready-made
clothing that’s no longer true.
But there is still a market in northern Thailand for hand-woven
materials and weaving communities still exist near Mae Wang, south of Chomthong
and north of Mae Rim. There will
always be a market for silk, too and it’s encouraging that at least half of
Thai Silk Village’s weavers are young women. At least some in the younger generation are taking up the
traditional skill.
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| pigs with wings and other images, Mengrai Kilns |
Silk is produced in other
parts of Thailand, but a type of glazed stoneware called celadon is a specialty
of the Chiang Mai region. Its
production originated in China two thousand years ago. Celadon workshops opened in
Sankamphaeng in the 14th century, perhaps started by Chinese
artisans who fled the Mongol invasion of China. Production halted during the chaos of the late 18th
century, when the Burmese occupation ended, but revived in the beginning of the
20th century.
The basic ingredient for the
celadon ware—cups, saucers, bowls, vases, statues, etc,--is a special local
clay called “black earth.” The
artisan creates the shape of the item in the same way as other ceramics, building
it up on a wheel, then allows it to dry naturally. If there will be designs on the surface of the piece,
another artist will apply these now and dry them before the first firing.
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| antique lacquer ware, Wat Nantharam museum |
The “biscuit firing” comes
next, at 800 degrees C. in a pot-shaped kiln. Afterwards the artisans make a careful check for cracks and
defects and then prepare the pieces to be dipped in the glaze. Wood ash combined with rice field silt
makes up the glaze. When the
pieces are all completely covered the workers then put them in a kiln and fire
them at 1250-1300 degrees C., with a reduced amount of carbon dioxide. This gives them a pale green
color. Depending upon how they are
cooled and dried the surfaces will either be smooth or crackled with multiple
tiny connected lines.
Pale green is the natural
celadon color, but with alterations in the process other colors are
possible. Allowing more oxygen
during the second firing results in colors from olive green to yellow to brown. Using the ashes of rice stalks,
beanstalks or bamboo for the glaze instead of wood ash produces yet more
colors. All these colors are
attractive and ’cool’—nothing bright or gaudy—and augment the elegance of the
items.
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| wood crafts, Hangdong road |
Lacquer ware is another craft common
around Chiang Mai, though not unique to the area. Northern Thailand is in the tropical zone and therefore
things made of wood, bamboo or rattan are vulnerable to insect attack, as well
as dampness. Coating an item with
lacquer provided a protective, weatherproof finish that prolonged its life and
use. For large storage urns and
bowls or for the cabinets holding a temple’s religious palm-leaf manuscripts,
this was a critical factor. Also,
because of their final glossy sheen, lacquered artifacts always looked nicer
that those that were not.
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| shop in Ban Tawai |
Like celadon, the lacquer
technique is quite ancient and began in China. The lacquer here comes from the treated, dyed and dried sap
of a type of lacquer tree (Toxicodendron
vernicifluum) common in northern Thailand and Myanmar. The sap is originally red, but with the
addition of a little iron oxide can turn to black. Several coats are applied, each one allowed to dry
thoroughly. The lacquer can also be
a base for adding golden imagery, gilding the item or for inlaying designs in
glass or mother-of-pearl.
Except for Bosang, craft
production on the Sankamphaeng route takes place in the big commercial factory
compounds. South of Chiang Mai,
however, are two villages that specialize in a single craft—Hangdong for
woodcarving and Muang Kung for ceramics.
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| old kilns near Muang Kung |
About 15 km south of Chiang
Mai’s old quarter a big sign in English marks the Hangdong intersection. The new, wealthier residential
neighborhoods lie to the west.
Upon turning east, typical old woodcarving shop houses begin nearly at
once. Further down the road are
larger work compounds, their products displayed in the yards or shops in
front. Several km further on is
the junction where a right turn south goes to Ban Tawai, the primary
destination of the tour buses.
Ban Tawai is Hangdong’s major
production center, a warren of small workshops and their displays. It was set up in the 1960s, when
tourism was in its infancy and the customers were from the growing Chiang Mai
middle class. It’s larger now, of
course, but makes a pleasant walk through shady lanes while passing a
staggering variety of wood products, from furniture to sculptures.
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| entrance to Muang Kung village |
Boxes, cabinets, beds, tables,
chairs and stools comprise the furniture products. Carvings are both religious and secular and in all sizes. The religious ones can be giant
reproductions of famous Buddhist sculptures in the region or as small votive
images suitable for family altars.
The secular carvings can be big sculptures of mythological heroes or
dragons down to small images of frogs, birds and elephants.
The frog has notches on its back and when a stick is rolled across it
makes a sound like the ”rib-bid” of a frog on a summer night. The birds, owls and elephants have a
hole on top and when blown the carving sounds like a tweeting bird, hooting owl
or trumpeting elephant.
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| Muang Kung shop display |
A few km north of Hangdong on
the way back to Chiang Mai, next to the junction for the road to Samoeng, lies
the pottery village of Muang Kung.
A huge sculpture of an earthen long-necked water pot stands beside the
village entrance arch. Some shops
are in the field next to the arch, but one passes more while wandering through
the village. City tour agencies
can even arrange pottery lessons for visitors. While it has been a major ceramics center for over two
centuries, Muang Kung did not even exist in classic Lanna times.
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| Baan Phor Liang Meun art |
In 1774 King Kawila of
Lampang, assisted by Siamese allies, expelled the Burmese from Chiang Mai,
which they had conquered in 1558.
But as a result of years of suppressed revolts, deportations and general
chaos, Chiang Mai and other urban centers were deserted. The city became the haunt of tigers and
other beasts. To reconstitute
Lanna as a state, Kawila had to repopulate it. And so he launched raids into northeast Burma to kidnap
people and bring them to live and work in Lanna.
Mostly these were Tai Khoen
people, a Tai sub-group culturally and linguistically close to the Tai Yuan who
populated Lanna. Priority
was on those with special craft skills.
Muang Kung’s ancestors came from pottery villages near Kengtung and that
city’s silversmiths and lacquer specialists were captured and resettled in the
Haiya neighborhood just south of Chiang Mai Gate. Wualai Road is full of silver shops and lacquer work still
carries on in the lanes around Wat Nantharam, which also has a small museum of
the wares and the condition of the antiques matches that of newly made items,
evidence of lacquer’s durability.
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| terracotta heads, Baan Phor Liang Meun |
On the other side of the moat,
in the southwest quarter of the old town, are two establishments catering to
ceramic enthusiasts. One is
Mengrai Kilns, on a lane off Arak Road, with a stock of excellent celadon
wares, as well as some unglazed items and a quiet garden in the back of the
showrooms. The items include all
the crockery associated with domestic life, but also some imaginative
sculptures like flying elephants and pigs with wings,
The other is Baan Phor Liang
Meun, around the corner from Chiang Mai Gate. Its workshops are across the lane from the courtyard, with a
coffee shop, that is the main display of its works. These are terracotta sculptures replicating the styles of
famous works of the region—Khmer, Thai, Javanese, Han Chinese and Indian. All around are standing full body
sculptures, half-body and heads, friezes and steles, making it altogether a
wonderful place to have a drink and snack and appreciate an enduring skill of
Chiang Mai’s crafts tradition.
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| sculptures in the garden of Baan Phor Liang Meun |
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