Handicrafts. Ayutthaya. No Super Tourist, I.

I’ve given up pretending to be Super Tourist.

This is my explanation for why I only saw one temple in Ayutthaya, former capital of the Siam empire, city famous for its ruins and temples. (And in a related Sanskrit note, the city was named after King Rama’s golden capital city of Ayodhya from the Ramayana.)

This is my explanation for why I spent more time at a handicraft center than at said temple. I know the temples are beautiful and the history is fascinating, but I also know where my interests lie. Show me how to weld a giant robot out of scrap metal or create a traditional batik design and I’m captivated.

Bang Sai Royal Folk Art & Craft Center

This center was founded by the beloved Queen Sirikit to house and train for her SUPPORT (the Foundation for the Promotion of Supplementary Occupations and Techniques) program. You can read more about the program here and here, but I’ll summarize briefly. Her Majesty saw that many rural people in Thailand depend financially upon agriculture, an unstable base, leaving them with time during the “offseason”. She also saw in her travels around the country that the knowledge about beautiful traditional arts and crafts was rapidly disappearing. In an inspired move, she began to offer training in these traditional handicrafts as well guaranteeing a fair price for the finished products, often buying them herself. Thus, with the SUPPORT program, she is able to give rural people additional income and dignified work, all while preserving traditional culture and knowledge.

It is easy to see why Queen Sirikit is so admired and beloved all over Thailand. She is a maternal figure to the whole country, almost in a literal sense. Her birthday is a national holiday—also known as Mothers Day.

This craft center is near the city of Ayutthaya. It offers many displays and gift shops containing traditional Thai handicrafts, but the highlight for me was touring through the workshops where students are learning and mastering various handicraft forms. After you enter the facility (buying a ticket for 100 baht) you are free to wander around, ducking your head into any workshop you please, observing everything from glassblowing to dressmaking.

The handicraft village. Beautiful surroundings and traditional-style houses. You can see a few demonstrations as you walk through, but the main attractions (the workshops) were adjacent to this village.

Textiles.

True to form, I was most fascinated by the textile handicrafts.

I started with silk brocade weaving. This is highly skilled and meticulous work.

One of the women I spoke with said it would take her six months of work to complete a two-meter-long piece.

 

This is the design sheet for one brocade pattern. A lot of the weavers seem to know their designs by heart, but I saw one woman refer to this sheet once or twice. Amazingly complex.

Some silk threads ready to be woven.

Traditional weaving. This is ikat or mat mii, in which the design has already been dyed into the spools of thread themselves.

A beautiful mat mii design in Thai silk.

Next I visited the batik workshop. Batik is a southern Thai handicraft, more closely associated with Malaysia and Indonesia.

On the left, the stenciled outline. On the right, a little pot of wax and a special tool for applying the wax to the fabric.

After the wax outlines have been applied, an artist carefully shades in the floral design.

A close up of a silk embroidery piece in progress. Notice the shading on the grass.

This is the most meticulous work I saw all day. A 1x2 meter piece will take seven women two years to complete. Two years.

Here’s a picture of what the final product will look like.

Other Handicrafts.

This is a type of basketry called yan lipao. The objects are woven using a strong indigenous vine. The work is meticulous and the strands of the vine about as thin as dental floss.

They use a tool similar in design to a wire stripper to whittle down the strands of the vine until they are small and pliable enough to work with.

A large and intricate dragon in the welding workshop.

Outside the welding and metalwork workshop.

On the left, an artist works with resin to create a sculpture. On the right, a MacGuyver-like contraption of metal wire and an old hairdryer keeps the resin warm and malleable.

The outside of the stained glass and batik workshop.

Stained glass in progress.

Completed stained glass pieces.

 

I had originally planned to post temple pictures here too, but this post is long enough already. The Folk Art Center was fascinating. It’s a little out of the way from Ayutthaya, but definitely worth the trip if you’re interested in traditional handicrafts.

Finding Love in an Indian Carpet Shop

I’ve been forthcoming about my love of traveling, my love of writing and teaching, my love for sampling fresh vegan food from all over the world, and about my unholy obsession with durian, but now it’s time to introduce you to a love affair which I often neglect and rarely indulge—my passion for textiles.

Kaftans in Beirut

It seems right to blame my father for this, after all, he gets the blame for so little. (Which is only fair; he is a peerless and wise soul.) But I really think I can trace my textile crush back to my first time in India, when, as a curious and slightly awkward sixteen-year-old, I followed him into a reputable carpet shop where we sat in small plastic chairs drinking warm chai and cold pepsi as the carpet sellers rolled out glistening silk carpets, layer upon layer, at our feet. My dad bent down to examine the individual threads. I too crouched on my knees and, in youthful exuberance, eyeballed the carpet so closely my nose pressed against its shimmering surface. He turned over a corner to look at the underside and check the knot count. I followed his lead, wrinkling my forehead and squinting at the carpet through one eye. When he remarked on the fineness of the design, I would nod my head in agreement. He taught me to look for little flaws and asymmetry and to cherish them—they are the mark of a handmade carpet. And when he showed me the difference between a pure silk, silk/wool blend, and wool carpet, I focused intently. (Hint: silk shines and lays flat; wool is fluffy and opaque and stands on end.)

I remember spending hours in that shop as two salesmen unfurled carpet after carpet, each one a jewel of brilliant colors, intricate designs, and breathtaking workmanship. The animation of carpets before me, like stills whirring in a film reel, mesmerized me and the way the salesmen handled the rugs—roughly, familiarly—was shocking to me. The carpets were works of art, so vibrant with color and life; surely they deserved more respect. Another revelation came to me when I stood up and tiptoed toward a deep-red carpet accented with a pale blue tree-of-life design.
“You can walk on it,” the salesman urged me.
“What? But it’s so beautiful!”
“It is a carpet,” he laughed. “It is made to be walking on.”

I felt foolish, but of course he was right. A good carpet would outlast its owner and would continue to look beautiful in old age. I slipped out of my sandals and plodded slowly from tassled end to tassled end. I could feel the silk underfoot. How smooth and flat the threads lay! The pile lay so flat in fact that the carpet appeared different from each end. Peering with the lay of the silk, I saw a lustrous, almost shining pastel coral and baby blue pattern. From the other end, looking against the lay of the tufted silk, that same carpet was darkly luminous, filled with blood red and deep azure.
We spent hours in the shop and didn’t buy a single thing. Though my father wanted to buy a carpet, and this was the first time I’d ever seen him enthusiastic about shopping, he refused to settle for a carpet he didn’t absolutely love. I was simply thrilled that he wanted to buy anything at all because my father has a pretty strict anti-clutter rule, and used to make me give or throw away something every time I wanted to buy anything new. As a fashion-obsessed teen, this drove me crazy. As a lightweight traveler now, I am grateful for his training.

Streets and shops of India

The next day, in a different carpet shop, we went through the same routine. But this time, somewhere in the layers of unfurled carpets draped before us, my dad found love; he found the carpet he had been waiting for.
In those two days and in those carpet shops, I too found love. Though I didn’t just find it in that pancake stack of jewel-toned carpets. I found love in the careful knotting of thread, in each hand-cut tuft of silk, in the delicate flora of the designs, and in the purity and exuberance of the colors. I found love in textiles.