Things Thai. Tanistha Dansilp
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Traditional design of dressing table and mirror on a platform at Ban Mor, Bangkok. the height and the fixed angle of the mirror were designed for this to be used from a seated position on the platform.
Dressing Tables and Cabinets
khan chong lae tu
Traditional Thai household life was spent mostly on the floor. Kept spotlessly clean and sometimes covered with mats, the floor itself thus took the place of certain basic items of furniture, and obviated the need for others. In former times, such furniture as existed would have been restricted to storage units such as chests and small cabinets, mirrors, screens and couches, all made of wood. Very little furniture has survived from the Ayutthaya period, and none from the Sukhothai period; the oldest pieces one is likely to see are from the 19th century—the Rattanakosin period.
However, changes were taking place during the 19th century, particularly under the reign of King Rama V (1868–1910) who encouraged modernization and the influence of European styles and customs. Naturally, these changes at first affected only the wealthier Thais who had the closest contact with the court, but they then began to separate the basic customs of the upper classes from those of most of the population.
The furniture shown here illustrates this gradual change of lifestyle. The dressing table with mirror shown on top right, heavily decorated and on a low matching bench, is clearly designed to be used from floor level. Note the fixed angle, supported by the bodies of two naga serpents, to suit the position of a woman sitting on the floor. Nevertheless, while its decoration is fully Thai, this item of furniture is Chinese in origin. Indeed, almost all domestic furniture in what is now thought of as a traditional Thai style is influenced by Chinese models. This can be seen, for example, in the re-curved feet, in feet with a lion’s paw motif, and in corner decorations of beds and benches. During the Second Reign, from 1809 to 1824, the King was heavily influenced by Chinese design ideas (see the parts of the Grand Palace built during this period). This continued in the Third, and to a lesser extent in the Fourth, Reigns. Pure Thai style in furniture appears to have been restricted to ecclesiastical items such as the scripture chests and cabinets shown on pages 76–77.
The naga decorations running tail to head down either side are typical of this item. this piece is from the rattanakosin period.
Dresser and mirror in a room at the teak house, rama ii park, Samut Songkhram.
The changes ushered in by King Rama V brought a second layer of influence on furnishings and lifestyle, from Europe, and the cabinets pictured here show the hybrid combination of Western and Chinese motifs translated into a Thai idiom. The effect was ornate and fussy, but that was entirely in keeping with their purpose—new to the Thais—of displaying personal and treasured possessions. This itself was the chief European import, the idea of collecting objects to show off in the home to visitors, and it naturally demanded glass panels.
Glass-fronted and sided display cabinets in the Jim thompson house museum, used typically for showing ceramic collections.
A cabinet from the rattanakosin period that would have been used for storing household items.
Cabinets are known in Thai after the style of their legs, and there are four basic types. One is tu kha mu, or ‘pig’s trotter’ in which the legs are straight (and in actual fact not very much like a trotter); another has inward curving legs, known as tu kha khu; a third is tu kha singh (‘lion’s legs’), which have double-curved legs, the feet being realistically claw-like and often clutching a ball (as shown in photo on bottom far right); the fourth is tu than singh, also with lion’s feet but in addition a paneled base with concave grips for moving it.
Heavily decorated dressing table with mirror, also from the rattanakosin period. Chinese in origin, the mirror is kept at a fixed angle by two carved naga serpents.
A contemporary take on gilded-door cabinets, installed in the covered entrance to a house in central Bangkok.
A double-fronted display cabinet filled with mother-of-pearl ware. the rear panel of such cabinets were often painted color deemed appropriate to the collection and room.
Traditional living room with a thang used as a day bed, Ban Khun Chanchem Bunnag, Bangkok.
Table Beds
thang
This widely known piece of Thai furniture, exported frequently to the West, in fact has no generally agreed name in English. The Thais sometimes refer to it in English as a bench, which misses the mark, and while ‘Thai coffee table’ might well describe the use that it tends to be put to in a Western living room, this has nothing to do with its origins. That the thang has no simple, direct translation, despite its ubiquity, is evidence of the way in which the Thais adopted a Chinese item of furniture and made it more ambiguous. To say that it is a dual-use piece wrongly suggests that it was intentionally conceived to be put to one use (low table) or another (bed plinth). Instead, it drifted between uses.
The origin is the Chinese day-bed, which was never used with a mattress (that was reserved for the canopy bed), nor used exclusively as a table. This was the ta, and in its longer form the chuang, and was originally a simple platform and the earliest form of raised furniture in China. It took until the Ming dynasty for the early box-like form to develop into an open frame with four short corner legs, and it was this that reached Thailand. A Chinese writer, Wen Zheng-heng, proclaimed the virtues of the sitting platform, the ta, in the early 17th century: “There was no way in which they were not convenient, whether for sitting up, lying down or reclining. In moments of pleasant relaxation they would spread out classic or historical texts, examine works of calligraphy or painting, display ancient bronze vessels, arrange dishes of food and fruit, or set out a pillow and woven mat.”
A thang in the Jim thompson house museum, its resting, day-bed function stressed by the addition of a more modern mattress.
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