Silk Weaving in the hot,dusty provinces of northeastern Thailand is a long tradition.This is the area known as the Isan
where the land is poor and rainfall scarce.It is a place where the cultures of Thailand,Loas and Cambodia mix and blend.
In the southern tier of the Isan,especially the proviences of Buriram,Surin and Sisaket,the population is largely ethnic
Cambodian and Cambodia lies just to the south down the Dongrek,a long escarpment,that demarcates the border.But
these are not new arrivals.and usually the people have lived in Thailand for generations.These provinces are also home
to ruins to the great antiquity.Khmer temples dating back eight centuries,quiet reminders that once the Isan was under
the sway of the great Khmer empire of Angkor.
The Isan is agrarian and most of the inhabitants are farmers who grow rice.But in the dry season,when the the fields are
brown and bare,the sound of weaving is heard in thousands of farmhouses across the region.For this is also the land
of weaving and women turn to their looms in the dry season,either to produce cloth for their families or to sell to augment
their meagre incomes.The finest weaving is done in silk.This is a true cottage industry in which mothers teach daughters
the complex art of reeling,dyeing and weaving.Traditionally,a girl's skill at weaving helped her to make a good marriage.
The skills continue to be passed along and the 'clack','clack'.clack' of the weavers at work is heard in the dry season.
Silk begins with silkworms,actually caterpillars of the Bombyx mori,whose cocoons,when unwrapped,yield threads of silk,
as much as 250 metres per cacoon.The silkworms feed only on mulberry leaves,a plant that grows well in Isan.During the
thirty-day growth cycle of the silkworm,it will shed its skin four times and increase body weight some thousand times.
Fifteen grams of silk eggs will produce as many as thirty thousands silkworm which will consume more than two thousand
pound of mulberry leaves in thirty days.When the farmers of Isan are not planting or harvesting rice,they are often tending
their trays of hungry silkworms,the sound of whose constant chewing of mulberry leaves has been likened to 'the falling of
light rain on leaves'.At the end of the thirty-day cycle,the silkworms stop eating and begin spinning.They spin cocoons that
are pure silk threads.this spinning lasts for a day and a half and result in golden-yellow cocoons that are hardy and
well-suited to the heat of Isan.
One of the most onerous task in the making of silk is the unwinding,or reeling,th cocoons,is a slow process that requires
great skill and patience.Typically,it takes ten hours to unwind 5 kilos of cocoons.This will yield enough thread for 2 metres
of silk,sufficient for a woman's sarong,or pha sin.Before the threads can be dyed and woven,they must be degummed as they
have a high sericin,or gum content that must be removed.This waxy gum is cleared by boiling the yarn.
Most silk makers in Isan go through this process in obtaining their silk.At his point the path divide.family waevers nowadays
often opt for chemical dyes over the traditional natural dyes.they are cheap,bright and come in many colours.few weavers
adhere to the old ways.One of them is Ajarn Weeradhamma Taragoonngeunthai of Ban Tasawang,near Surin.Ajarn means
professor.An ethic Cambodian,he was originally a painter and teacher of painting.In this article we will refer hin as the Ajarn.
Several years ago,the Ajarn was teaching traditional Thai painting in Bangkok when Her Majesty Queen Sirikit asked him
to help revive the dying art of silk brocade weaving.The Ajarn,now thirty-eight years old,recalls that in his youth his native
village of Ban Tasawang was full of silk weavers,who used traditional methods.From observing the old weavers,including
his parents,Ajarn learned how to make natural dyes,reel and prepare the silk for weaving and weave.After graduating from
high school,he went to Bangkok to study art and eventually teach in Palace.For many years,Queen Sirikit has been involved
with preserving and promoting the traditional arts and crafts of Thailand.With the encouragement and support of Her Majesty
and the Queen's wardrobe mistress Khunying Piyabhassara,the Ajarn returned to Ban Tasawang to begin his new life as a
maker of fine silk brocade.His company is called Noble Thai Silk.
The Arjan explained that silk weaving was a steep decline in Surin when he returned home.It was
Too time-consuming and expensive to make silk in the traditional ways.Fews people wanted to learn.Children have to go to school these days and by the time they graduate from high school
They are too old to start.the adult weavers that are in his workshop began silk weaving at the age of eight or nine.When he turned his hand to silk making he started with six artisans.Today more
Than one hundred people in the workshop are organised into specialised teams
A purist,the Ajarn uses only natural dyes and everything starts with the three primary colours.
For red,the crusty nests of insects are used.These resinous substances,called krang by the Thai,
are secreted by the female of the lac insect.The Krang is washed,.crushed with a pestle,and then boiled.Leaves are added for acidity,then is ready as a dye.Blue dye comes from the indigo plant.
Today there are few indigo dyers left in Isan.Indigo dye leaves an indelible stain on the hands and a residual smell of indigo that sticks with the dyer.The third dye is yellow and is made from the
Chipped wood or a tree called prahuot by the Cambodians.From these three basic dyes,additional colours can be made by the top-dyeing method.For example,indigi-dyed threads can be redyed in the yellow dye,creating green threads.
Much of the silk weaving in Isan is Ikat or as the Thai call it mudmee.In this process some silk threads are tied off before the fibres are dyed thus creating a pattern in the area tied off.Ikat is a Malay word meaning to tie or bind.In Thai,mud means to tie and mee means a long thread or noodle.This is technically known as reject dyeing and the art often feature designs that go back centuries and can be seen in stone bas-reliefs on nearby walls of Khmer temples dating from the 12th century.The Ajarn uses some ikat in his silks but his specialty is brocade for which he uses a slightly thicker extra pattern thread in the weft.i.e lateral threads,which are interwoven with the warp,i.e. vertical threads.This weaving method is known as continuous supplementary weft;in Thai the technique is call khit.
Brocade is defined as fabric woven with an elaborate design,especially one having a raised overall pattern.The silk fabrics of Noble Thai Silk meet these criteria and often incorporate original designs of the Ajarn,based on traditional styles.Some can be worn only be a member of the Thai
Royal family,as they contain special symbolism appropriate only for royal use.
Jennifer Hughes,an English lecturer on Southeast Asian textiles,says of the brocades."The unique feature of this exquisite weaving is the use of pit looms to accommodate the number of pattern heddles required to produce the complicated designs.The heddle is a device for lifting various warp threads in sequence,so that each extra weft thread makes up a different row of the pattern.The Ajarn's designs may need as many six hundred and fifty rows of pattern,each row of which is programmed with a stick or rod into lengthy vertical string heddles that hang above and below the loom."
Because of the heat of Isan,much of the weaving is done after dark by teams of weavers,working quietly,with only the sound of the beater adding each thread to the brocade,When the women speak,it is often in Cambodian,their first language.
The Ajarn is no exception.Jeniffer Hughes describes how the brocade is woven:'Four women are needed to weave some of the most complex cloth:one weaver,and three assistants to move the pattern sticks up and down the length of the vertical heddles.Each string has a loop in it through which a warp is threaded,and when a stick is brought forward bt two women sitting on either side of the loom,the weaver lifts that particular combination of warps,and inserts the supplementary weft into the shed,or gap,created,thereby adding a pattern row.The stick is then handed down to a woman in the pit where it is placed back in the strings to retain the pattern row.The next stick can then be moved down as required.When all the sticks have been used,the pattern may be repeated in reverse by shifting them all from below to above the warps again.'
The process is detailed and time consuming.It takes a four-women team two months to weave a 2-metre piece of silk.This may cost US$2000.The Ajarn noted sadly that many weavers have forsaken the old ways because they cannot compete with modern machine-made fabrics.His fabrics have a very small,and special,clientele.Many are destined for the royal court in Bangkok.
When we visited Ban Tasawang,the Ajarn showed us a piece of cloth that would be delivered to Her Majesty Queen Sirikit the following week.The ornately decorated piece of silk had,as its central motif,the mythical bird Garuda, and only someone from the royal family could wear this fabric.Michelle Pease, President of the National Museum Volunteers in Bangkok, explained the significance of the Garuda `Garuda is Vishnu mount.He is half bird, half human.Vishnu is a Hindu god, the Preserver and Vishnu riding Garuda is used as the symbol of royalty in Thailand.The Thai kings of present dynasty are known as `Rama' because they are considered to be reincarnations of Rama who is an avatar of Vishnu.They are considered reincarnations of Vishnu because he is ` the Preserver' and the Thai kings are considered the `preservers of the nation'.
In addition to his work at ban Tasawang making fabrics for the court, the Ajarn worked for several years in Siem Reap,Cambodia helping to revive the silk weaving industry there after the terrible destruction of the Khmer Rouge regime.His native Cambodian language fluency was an asset and he was acclaimed for his efforts.It is somewhat ironic that a Thai has helped reintroduce Khmer weaving traditions in the country from where it sprang centuries ago.The Asia-Pacific Econimic Cooperation(APEC) summit meeting in Thailand last year thrust the Ajarn and his silk
Into the international spotlight when the world leaders and their wives,including President Bush of the USA and President Putin of Russia were all presented with silk from Noble Thai Silk.The quiet village of Ban Tasawang has become a regular stop for visitors to Isan,including silk connoisseurs who seek out the Ajarn brocades,for this is his main commercial outlet.He work out of his 200-year old Thai-style house that was transported to Surin when he returned home.The house sits on a pond,adjacent to a rice field and all around are the weavers who create truly noblr silk at Noble Thai Silk.
In Bangkok on December 1st 2004 the Jim Thompson Center for Textiles and the Arts will be open a major exhibition of silk from Isan.Three small films will be shown at the exhibition depicting the making of ikat,the natural dyeing of silk,and the full process of silk making,from silkworms to finished textiles.Much of the making took place in the Ajarn's atelier at Ban Tasawang whre the old traditions live on.
Article by Barry Broman
From Arts of Asia volume 34 number 4
Posted by dkromok
at 10:06 PM WST
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