Things Thai. Tanistha Dansilp
apartment buildings, hotels and a malaise of grandiose high-rise ‘statements’, all air-conditioned, all imported in style, all depressingly familiar. The bustle and energy are certainly here, but is this really the face of Thai culture?
But take a closer look at the passing cityscape (much easier when the traffic slows to a crawl at one of the freeway exits). Between the modern buildings are occasional glimpses of something different—a flash of sunlight on gold from a delicate spire in the grounds of a temple, a strange but elegant wooden roof, a narrow lane lined with food vendors and a woman swaying under the load of two wicker pannier baskets. Tucked away throughout Bangkok are warrens of these lanes, virtual villages in the city. Being where they are, these communities are perhaps not quite as neat and tidy as their counterparts in the countryside, but they contain much of the same traditions.
The fact is that Thailand is still exceptionally rural. Despite the migration to the cities, most Thais live in hamlets, villages and small towns, and this is where the culture has changed least. It is also where we must look to find most of the artefacts that reflect this culture. And they certainly are there to be found—a wealth of ‘things Thai’ that are unique, still in production, and still being used in daily life. The water dipper, rice basket, farmer’s hat, coconut scraper and the tube skirt are all products of the country’s strong tradition of village crafts.
Enter any Thai monastery—easy to find, there are more than 30,000—and you find yet another world, full of distinctive Buddhist iconography represented in carvings, bronze castings, mural paintings and innumerable crafted offerings. More surprisingly perhaps, for a foreign visitor, is that these monasteries are so alive, not just with their community of monks, but as active places of worship and meditation for the laity. There are hardly any monasteries that are not an integral part of the normal daily life of the village or town.
Back in Bangkok, in and around the original heart of the city known as Rattanakosin Island (actually separated only by canals), you find a third area of Thai culture—that surrounding the royal court. This too is distinguished by its artefacts and its crafts, more refined, more accomplished and more costly than those of the country and the monastery, yet related to both aesthetically. The Grand Palace and the sacred complex of Wat Phra Kaeo (the Temple of the Emerald Buddha) within its precincts is an exemplar of high Thai art. In the past, the best artisans were recruited to work for the palace and for the nobility, and they evolved a refined and highly decorative art in several different fields—mother-of-pearl inlay, gold-resist lacquerwork, ceramics, and many more.
However, this decorative tradition, which makes up so much of Thai artistic expression, would not have survived naturally to the extent that it has without positive support and nurturing. This occurred under various rulers, and continues to this day. Thais value their cultural heritage as much as they do their sense of national identity. Many writers, both Thai and foreign, have tried to get to grips with the concept of Thai-ness, a concept that is elusive in definition. Perhaps it even resists precise definition in words. An alternative approach, and the stimulus for this book, is to look at how Thai-ness expresses itself through its artefacts. The things Thai that follow are an oblique approach to understanding something of the national character. This selection that we have chosen, from the everyday to those conceived for special purposes, can, we believe, give a more eloquent picture of Thai culture.
Decorative Arts
Items Created for Royalty and Wealthy Patrons
In what was until recently a highly structured society, the most skilled artists and craftsmen were requisitioned for work at the royal court, and a clear distinction existed between these specialists and those who worked in the villages. They were known as chang sib mu, meaning artisans of the ten types, and while they may have originally been drawn from the same pool of craftsmanship, their specializations were in courtly productions, including draughts-men and gilders (the first category), lacquerers, wax-modellers, fretworkers and fruit and vegetable carvers. To this day, a few have their ateliers within palace grounds.
The interior of the Lacquer pavilion, a former scripture library, at Suan pakkard palace, Bangkok.
Lacquerware
khrueang kheun
One of the most important traditional crafts in Thailand, the manufacture of lacquer receptacles is heir to a long Asian tradition, of at least 3000 years, almost certainly originating in China. In its basic form, Thai lacquerware is undecorated and highly functional, although its inherent beauty may disguise its utilitarian nature. Well-applied lacquer has a remarkable range of characteristics, being light, flexible, waterproof and hard. It resists mildew and polishes to a smooth luster. Indeed, it has many of the qualities of some plastics, but with the advantage of being a naturally evolved product from local materials.
Lacquer in Southeast Asia comes from the resin of Melanorrhea usitata, a fairly large tree that grows wild, up to an elevation of around 3,000 feet (914.4 meters) in the drier forests of the north, and is similar to the sumac tree of China and Japan, Rhus vernicifera. It is completely unrelated, incidentally, to the shellac used in Europe and India, which is the secretion of an insect.
In Thai, lacquerware is called khrueang kheun (khrueang meaning in this case ‘works’), and this gives a clue to its origins. The Tai Kheun are an ethnic Tai group from the Shan States in Burma, and after the 1775 re-capture of Chiang Mai from the Burmese following a lengthy period of war, the new ruler, Chao Kawila, forcibly moved entire villages from Shan to re-populate and revitalize the city. This kind of re-settlement after victory was a common practice in the period, and craftsmen were particularly valued. One community, of lacquer workers, settled in the south of the city and their name became, for the Thais, synonymous with lacquer.
Although lacquer can be and often is applied to wood, its original, pure use was over a carefully made wicker base structure. This allows two of the finer qualities of the lacquer—its lightness and flexibility—to dominate. In fact, with a well-made bowl it should be possible to compress the rim so that the two opposite sides meet, without cracking or deforming it. The process is expectedly time-consuming. The form is first made using splints of hieh bamboo, and these must be of the width and thickness appropriate to the size of the object. If they are too big, the gaps between them will be too wide to take the coating of lacquer. The best time considered for applying lacquer is towards the end of the rainy season, when the atmosphere is moist but not too hot. The resin is applied in a number of layers, each of which must dry completely before receiving the next coat, and the entire process can take up to six months (very unlikely nowadays, of course!). The resin, known as rak in Thai, has varying admixtures at different stages. Often, the first layer has been mixed with finely ground clay to help it fill the gaps in the wicker-work, while the last and finest layers are mixed with ash, from burnt rice, bone or cow dung.
An 18th century English dresser complements a collection of northern thai flower-patterned red-and-black lacquerware.
A variety of black lacquerware boxes in shapes ranging from cylinders to carved frogs.
An offering receptacle lacquered red inside with gilding on black for the exterior; an oval box inset with diamond slices of bamboo; eight wooden