So, today I went to San Kamphaeng Road (I may have the spelling wrong there, but since I’ve seen at least three transliterations today, I’m not sure it matters), where the craft factories/showrooms are. In fact they’re more showrooms and demo sites than factories…there’s precious little actual production going on there, but it’s great for learning.

San Kamphaeng Road runs from the outskirts of Chiang Mai to the town of San Kamphaeng, I think nine or ten kilometers in all. You can get there in one of four ways: on a bus tour, hiring a tuktuk (three-wheeled golf cart) driver, taking a public songtao (pickup-taxi), or under your own power (usually a rented motorbike or car). The choice turns out to be quite important, as how much money you have determines how much the shops overcharge you.

In particular, if you take a tuktuk, the driver collects a commission on anything you buy (secretly added to your quoted price), and gods help you if you arrive with a group tour: they’re charged double (literally) what individual tourists pay, and the shopkeepers won’t negotiate. Basically, the factories make their money by shamelessly overcharging group tourists–they’re typically short-term tourists with more money than time, who haven’t a clue about local pricing, and (probably) come with high agency commissions. Individual tourists get an upfront 20-50% off the posted prices, and you can negotiate way down from that.

So anyway, I took a public songtao to San Kamphaeng town, decided town was boring, and hopped a songtao back to the first set of factories. I stopped by a silver factory first, where they were hammering out repousse silver, then went by a celadon workshop, a lacquer workshop, a weaving place, and a bronzeworks (unfortunately the bronzeworks weren’t demo-ing).

Repousse silver turns out to be really amazing stuff. It’s 92.5-100% silver, and hand-hammered from start to finish. A 6″ shallow bowl starts life as a 4″ disk of silver about 3/16″ thick; the disk is rolled or hammered into a flatter disk, and then heated and hand-hammered to form a rough bowl shape. By this time it’s quite thin, the whole bowl weighs maybe three ounces.

Now the worker changes to a smaller, more delicate hammer, and hammers the bowl on a small round anvil, tapping quite delicately and rotating the bowl from side to side to obtain a smooth curve, with almost no visible hammer-marks. The bowl is now smooth with a few hammer-marks, and very thin.

At this point they do something to hammer in the basic design–I’m not sure what exactly because it wasn’t being demoed, but it produces a very rough outline of the shapes. Then they melt large sheets of tar, fill the bowl with tar (with a stick in it to make handling the bowl easier), and wait for the tar to cool. (This provides a malleable backing to soften hammer-blows.)

Now the worker takes a collection of patterned stamps (they look like a bunch of precision screwdrivers with patterned ends) and begins hammering at the bowl. Straight stamps produce straight lines; little triangles, leaves, bird-heads, and so on. It’s painstaking work; it can take ten or fifteen minutes just to put a series of straight lines around a bowl. Each of the repousse bowls is absolutely covered in intricate pattern-stamps…so I can’t imagine it takes less than ten hours to do a bowl, start to finish. They’re beautiful.

Anyway, after watching the demos (yes I did take pictures and will post them when I get a chance), I wanted to get a small repousse piece myself, but was a bit intimidated by the prospect of bargaining for it. It’s hard to get over the highly American conviction that to offer less than the asking price is insulting the vendor–especially with respect to craftswork, since artisans are typically underpaid anyway. It didn’t help that as soon as I arrived a salesperson would follow me around, trying very hard to cater to/anticipate my every need. In the U.S., of course, labor is usually the most expensive part of any operation, so to take up a salesperson’s time without buying anything is a hideously rude thing to do. (Conversely, it’s extremely rude for a salesperson to hover, because it creates an implied debt/pressure to buy.) It’s really really hard to get over this, at least for me. Some people take to it immediately. So I didn’t buy anything.

Next down the street was a celadon painting place. Celadon is a type of ceramic glaze which is made from the ashes of some sort of wood; it produces a nice translucent green color which is reminiscent of jade (in fact it was an early form of faux jade). They had plain celadon, and also some very lovely painted pieces (also have photos of those). Not much to say about that since it’s all very straightforward–they rough in the design in charcoal, paint in the various patterns (took two photos of a half-finished dragon vase), and then fire it. They also had some people carving designs into bowls–the bowls are cast, dried until the clay has a leather-like consistency, and then carved with what look suspiciously like linoleum-carving tools.

After that I ran into a lacquer showroom, which was totally empty–they had to turn on the lights for me, and three or four salespeople followed me around as I was looking at things. Signs everywhere proclaimed a 50% discount–which I assumed was simply the non-group-tour pricing. (I don’t know what they do when a minibus appears–run around and gather up the discount signs? They certainly have enough people to do it.) Anyway, I looked around for a bit, found a very nice pattern of Celtic knotwork mixed with more traditional patterns, bargained for a set of containers suitable for eggwork, but wound up only getting the square box. While I was waiting for them to wrap up the box, I started a conversation with the owner about how they make lacquered boxes.

A confession: I don’t think much of lacquer. I think because I’ve always associated it with cheap stuff you get for a few bucks in Chinese discount stores. But this stuff was definitely above the average, though not as stunning as the wood or silverwork…

Anyway, I’m not sure how we got started on it, but we wound up talking all about the history of lacquer, how they make it, and engaging in the universal commiseration of artists about how art never pays. It turns out that lacquer in Thailand is about 100 years old; it arrived from China and Burma (China–> Burma and Burma–> Thailand mostly), and was popularized in Chiang Mai after the Burmese invaded Thailand and took over the city. It’s made by flattening bamboo, then painting it with black lacquer, then scratching the black and applying/rubbing in colored lacquers. For the black lacquer, they use dye from a local tree: use a knife to create long slashes in the bark, then wait several hours for the dye to run down. At this point, it’s white; to use it in lacquer, you have to wait several more hours for the dye to turn black (oxidation?). The other colors are also natural, and come from a variety of trees, plants, etc. (Yes, those were my fingers you saw twitching–I love natural dyes.)

Anyway, a good lacquer worker is apparently very fast, and can make a lacquer plate in 3 hours or so. He lamented, though, that lacquer is a dying art; all of his 20 workers are old, and no one new is learning. It takes time to learn, and younger people can make better money elsewhere, so they’re not interested. When he realized I was interested in the craft of lacquer (and not just as something cheap to stick on your coffeetable) he said he’d try to get me a cheaper price on the five boxes I had been looking at, and offered to take me up tomorrow to show me around the factory. He also asked how long I was going to be in Chiang Mai and what I’d seen–I think he was going to offer to show me around, or introduce me at the other artisans in the area. I told him I was leaving tomorrow, but would be back, and he gave me his card and his cell number and told me to call him when I came back into town. Very sweet guy, I’m looking forward to seeing his “factory” tomorrow, and will definitely look him up once I’m back in Chiang Mai.

He also said that business is way down…Noi said the same thing, there are about 30% fewer tourists than usual, and the ones who are here aren’t spending. He told me that the road used to be packed with minibuses, and he could sell without offering discounts…but with the terrorist worries, business is very very bad. He had a woman demonstrating lacquermaking outside, but had to send her home, and pay her on commission rather than on salary. I hope they all make it through OK.

(Tourism in general in Thailand is way down…and in Phuket, it’s even worse: 50% of normal. This suggests I might be able to get a good deal on diving–don’t know.)

The weaving place was just amazing. If I got started on the ingenious design of Thai looms I’d never stop, so I think I’ll save that description for the spinners’ list (unless you really want to know the gory details of treadle harnesses, shuttle throwing, and reed design). But they had demos also of silkworm rearing, moths, and reeling off the silk cocoons…they have a really cool device for reeling silk that I must construct once I get home. (I tried to buy one, but they weren’t selling. *sigh*) It’s hopeless to describe–the closest I can come is a small open barrel/wheel (think hamster wheel) set on top of a steaming cauldron full of cocoons. Strands of silk run through a small hole and up over the barrel; the operator simply pulls the strand of silk, and the cocoons reel off easily.

The really ingenious part of this, if you’ve ever tried hand-reeling cocoons, is that this method doesn’t require attaching individual filaments by hand. There are a hundred or more cocoons in the pot, and the jostling ensures that new fibers are picked up as old ones break, etc. –so the reeling can be done more or less continuously. This is way faster than the usually recommended method, which involves finding the end of each individual cocoon with a toothbrush. If there aren’t enough filaments, they stir the pot with a cleft wooden stick to encourage more filaments to adhere.

They also had photos and descriptions of the natural dye colors used on silk, but since they were in Thai, they unfortunately didnt’ mean much to me. I may drag Noi there to see if she can help. (Well, after I finish up in Bangkok, that is.)

I’m embarrassed to admit that I bought a half-kilogram of reeled silk, despite having no idea what I’m going to do with it. So much for my firm resolve to stop stockpiling useless crafts stuff. On the other hand, as a souvenir of Thailand I can’t think of anything I’d like better. Finished work is so boring. 😉

Last stop was a “bronze factory”, where they took one look at my bulging bags and immediately steered me to the expensive jewelry section. After I escaped from there, a salesperson followed me around through the rest of the store, which consisted of some very nice jade carvings, some cheap jade sculpture, some so-so bronzes (mostly Buddhas), and some stunning large bronze sculptures. (Fortunately shipping the life-size bronze tiger would have been an ungodly nightmare, so I didn’t have to resist the urge to get one for my nonexistent living room.) Luckily, just as the hovering salesperson was really starting to get to me, my phone rang–Richard, the body-painter. He’s sacked the first photographer (not good enough), gotten a better studio, and is 3,000 baht over budget, is that OK? (Yes, of course it is. Don’t be silly. 😉 )

Anyway, by the time we worked out the details, the hovering salesperson had vanished, and I’d somehow mysteriously decided that I needed a jade sword. Or dagger. Dagger is closer to it: it’s about 18″ long (best guess), stone, and has a dragon carved into the blade. I asked the salesperson for the price, she said 12,500 baht (which was not only clearly outrageous but also way out of my range), I said no way, and she said, “How much? Nine thousand?” So we did some bargaining, and I wound up getting it for 6,000 baht–but I had to swear up and down that I wasn’t part of a group tour, and wasn’t staying at any fancy hotel, first. (My guess: they don’t want to give any discounts to group tours, because it would create endless trouble if word ever got out; also, if they give a discount to one, they’ll have to give discounts to all of them, plus any of their friends who might come to Thailand (etc.). And, group tours are the people with money, the ones who make up the bulk of their income.)

So now I have a jade sword, of sorts. It goes with the jade stone in the “tiara” I’ve been making for the barbarian warrior photo shoot: a large jade cabochon set in the center, with handmade silver leaves on either side. It’s quite pretty, and makes me look sort of like an Indian princess. How this reconciles with the chunky necklace rusted fish spear, and big bamboo bow, I’m not quite sure, but I’m sure we’ll think of something…

I also *almost* bought a jade elephant, out of nostalgia for my college days…the sign for Dabney House is a green elephant (long story), and I thought it would be pretty cool to have my own green elephant. But after the sword, I decided I’d better quit. 😉

(The shop people were all very amused by the sword. One of them asked me, “You use it, or only decoration?” I said, “No, no! Only decoration! Already broke up with boyfriend, what I use it for?!?” …okay, for a domestic violence advocate, that’s a horrible joke–but it was still funny.)

After that I walked another kilometer or so on the way back, before catching another songtao back into town. In a little bit, when the cafe closes, I’m going to head down the street to see if I can catch a glimpse of the gateois.

So the net of Chiang Mai seems to be that I have one contact in the lacquerware factory guy (I pointed him at my website), one contact for textiles (ooh, hurt me 😉 ), a lot of photos of craftwork, and a jade sword. I’ll see which of those I can get up on my website, but if it doesn’t happen tonight, I imagine it’ll be a few days. As soon as I get back to Bangkok, it’ll be body painting; and that will, of course, generate another slew of photos.

Hmm, maybe I’ll come straight back to Chiang Mai after the body painting, and hang out for a few days while I catch up on all the travel writing.

Tien

Chiang Mai is amazing. Also heartbreaking. It’s the second largest city in Thailand, the tourist center for Northern Thailand, and it is *crammed* with the most exquisite woodcarving, silverwork, and weaving imaginable. All on sale for an absolute pittance. As a craftsperson, it makes me want to cry.

For example, for about $45, you can buy a handwoven mudmee silk wrap-skirt, maybe 2 meters of fabric, weight comparable to lightweight crepe or heavy China silk. Absolutely beautiful work; I think I have a detail photo from a mudmee jacket on my website, at

http://www.travelingtiger.com/travelingtiger/travel_crafts/images/mudmee_detail.\ jpg .

(If the URL gets cut off, it’s in the travel section, last photo in the travel crafts section.)

Now, just weaving a piece that fine, by hand, takes an expert weaver 3 days at least. But there’s a lot more to mudmee than that: it’s an ikat method, meaning the fabric isn’t printed after weaving (as is true with most American fabrics); the threads are dyed *before* weaving. This involves winding the entire weft onto a frame (by hand), and dividing it into about 300 tiny bundles for every yard of fabric you plan to weave. Then you tie each bundle individually into a complex pattern, dip it into a dyepot, untie it, and retie it again for the next color. This is seriously complicated stuff.

The net upshot of all this is that 2 yards of mudmee silk takes about 10 days of full-time, 12-hour days to weave. Price for the jacket, full retail in an expensive department store–2,000 baht, or about $50. It’s heartbreaking. The weavers don’t even get paid the Thai minimum wage of 130 baht/day ($3.25/day). And they’re infinitely more skillful than the best American handweavers.

So, like I said, it’s almost enough to make one give up crafts entirely. The woodcarving and silverwork here are even more beautiful than the textiles. The woodcarving is incredibly intricate–dragons, phoenixes, elephants, etc., and the silverwork is equally detailed/beautiful. You do have to be a little careful, though; the woodcarving varies in quality and some carvers are “cheating” with wood putty. The silver also varies; Phil (the bodypainter’s friend) used to be in the silver industry, so tonight he’s going to take me to the Night Market and show me how to distinguish between cast, repousse (beaten), and otherwise-manufactured silver. (He can do it at a glance.)

Nonetheless I’ve been just amazed by the quality. A lot of these pieces here really ought to be in museums–for example, a silver filigree belt ($350) fit for an Indian prince, a 7’x 3′ silk tapestry ($100), or the twelve-foot woodcarving I just walked past. This piece is carved from the outside of a single log, about 2′ thick, and features twelve feet of detailed forest scenes with many animals (wild boar, elephant, deer, etc.) occupying glades amongst the trees. Each of the twenty or thirty animals on the log is carved separately, in exquisite detail, and they’re separated by equally well-carved trees. It’s amazing. (I tried to get a photo, but the window had too much reflection.)

At any rate, Chiang Mai is stuffed with places like that. Almost every block of the old city contains various treasures of handicraft; it’s dreadfully frustrating both because I am specifically NOT shopping right now, and because there’s no way on earth I’ll ever have the skill to make anything that beautiful myself. (Of course, that’s because I’m doing other things–but still, it’s frustrating. 😉 )

Chiang Mai itself is a fairly typical Thai city, with problems with congestion and air pollution, though not nearly as bad as Bangkok. It’s very touristy–in fact in the inner city every other shop seems to be an Internet cafe, Western-style restaurant, or hotel/guesthouse–but still quite typically Thai. It’s a charming city; the inner city is surrounded by a square-shaped canal (almost like a moat), with fountains rising sporadically up from the canal.

Main tourist things to do in Chiang Mai (besides shopping for exquisite crafts) include going to the various craft factories to watch the artisans, trekking to see the various local hilltribes, and elephant trekking/games. There’s also Thai boxing, a shooting range, and all sorts of other “standard” Western entertainments, including a pool hall. 🙂 One of the shopkeepers told me that at night the gatoeis (transvestite) sex workers also dress up and parade up and down the boulevard to attract clients–I may make a special trip down to see this. I haven’t seen any of the gatoeis since I got to Bangkok (at least not any I recognized 😉 ), so I figure it’s worth a small side trip at least.

I spent this morning chatting with an Irish (?) expat, who runs a tourist-antique shop, about Eastern vs. Western sociology–interesting conversation, will have to go back there tomorrow and chat a bit more. He also collects woodcarvings, and told me a good bit about woodcarving techniques. I now know a few ways to tell Thai woodcarving from Burmese, and slightly more about distinguishing true handcarving from carving done with power tools.

The afternoon I spent talking to a woman named Noi (friend of Phil’s), who runs a pair of small textile shops and is a serious textiles expert. I showed her the bottom and top-whorl drop spindles, which fascinated her; she specializes in history, not practice. We had a fairly short conversation about textiles–her main expertise is Tibetan, but she’s also well-versed in the local textiles. Unfortunately she is very busy this week with her daughter starting school, so she couldn’t talk indefinitely, but we exchanged email addresses and when I come back to Chiang Mai, we’ll see if we can’t spend more time chatting.

It turns out that Noi really, really, really wants to go to Laos and check out hilltribe weaving. She can’t afford it right now, though (terrorism threat has really put a dent in tourism, so it’s been a very poor month for sales). I’m considering offering to cover expenses for a month of travel in Laos, if she’ll take me along with her. I’m not sure about the cost, but frankly I’m more than willing to cut a month off my travel time if it means I get an expert textiles guide to poke around the hilltribes of Laos with me. (I mean, come on, make me suffer!) So I may propose it, we’ll see what happens.

Noi also knows a local expert in natural dyes–unfortunately he’s off traveling somewhere this month, but should be back in January. She also showed me some fascinating yellow dyewood–she doesn’t know what it is, but it was sent to her from Laos–which she’s having trouble using; she can’t get the color to adhere on cotton (not surprising since cellulose fibers are tricky). Anyway, I mentioned that I knew some mordanting recipes for cotton, and she suggested that we try them together when I come back to Chiang Mai. This sounds really amazingly exciting, fun, etc. 🙂 So I’m definitely coming back, either immediately after Bangkok, or in January.

Incidentally, do any of you know anyone in the U.S. who collects, or knows people who collect, antique jewelry/textiles? If so please drop me an email; Noi wants to do a show/sale in the U.S. someday, so I told her I’d try to find her the right connection. So if you know someone who might know more than I do (zero), let me know. I’m happy to engage in favor-trading, i.e. if you want somehting from Thailand in exchange, let me know and I’ll arrange it.

In any event, Noi and I got along quite well and I’m looking forward to spending more time talking to her once I get back to Chiang Mai.

And now, it’s back to the hotel, where I’ll probably nap for a bit before meeting back up with Phil. I’m taking it pretty easy on my trip through Chiang Mai (and traveling generally); I think it’s better to see a few things, and have time to digest them, than to try cramming as much as possible into a single trip. I admit cheerfully that this runs counter to my usual philosophy, but this trip *is* for trying new things… 😉

Tien

Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand, has quite a different “beat” from Bangkok. It’s still busy and tourist-friendly (in fact I’m ecstatic to report that I’m using a super-fast satellite connection from the Internet cafe attached to my hotel), but not nearly as crowded or as mercenary. (The tuktuk drivers, for example, only want to charge you *twice* the going rate, which in Bangkok is practically giving the house away.) Handicrafts are clearly a major theme here–the tourist brochures are dominated by advertisements for handwoven silk, handmade silver, various hilltribe crafts, and so on. Also elephant trekking, hilltribe treks, and trips to nearby countries (Burma, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia), plus the ubiquitous “massage houses”, though they’re (mostly) more discreet than the ones in Bangkok. it’s also a lot cheaper here than in Bangkok; I have a room with fan, hot shower, and air conditioning for 150 baht/night–plain but quite livable.

My contact here is Phil, who’s a friend of the body painter’s. Long silver hair pulled back in a ponytail, forties to late fifties, nice guy although I only talked to him briefly this morning. (He’s nocturnal, because he deals a lot with the West Coast of the U.S., but stayed up “late” to help me get in from the train station.) He’s active both in textiles and on the AIDS circuit, so it will be interesting talking to him about the sociological aspects of AIDS in Thailand, and the local handicrafts. He’s also going to introduce me to a friend who is a textile expert…I can’t wait.

On the train down I “met” a 20-year-old American (Syracuse U) college student traveling with a friend of his, and arguing over the meaning of life in what was very clearly one of those 3am college conversations. *sigh* Very friendly, totally clueless, puppy-dog, wanted to know all about the subtle differences between Chinese and American cultures, but didn’t understand a single word as far as I could tell. Very much like a hyperfriendly puppy that simply will NOT go away (I finally had to get rude). it made me cringe, thinking about my high school days when I was probably just the same.

On the flip side, I’ve had a lot more fun since I realized that at any given point, I’ll consider my five-year-younger self a naive idiot, and that there’s therefore no point in trying to play conservative (a daring naive idiot has more fun 🙂 ). Sure, five years from now I’ll probably cringe, looking back at this particular trip–but at least I’ll have photos of a painted barbarian to console me. 😉

Speaking of which, I’ve put together the first draft of the little “tiara” I’m making for my hair for the barbarian painting. It promises to be quite nice (and exactly as I visualized)–it’s a set of five handmade sterling silver leaves, in gradually descending sizes, which I’m wire-wrapping with a coil of wire I bought on one of my crafts expeditions. I may replace the center leaf with a large jade cabochon, I aven’t decided yet. Depending on the color scheme Richard uses, I may also have to spray-paint it gold, although turning sterling silver into plain costume jewelry seems like an awful sin. We’ll see how it works out.

Off to go exploring…owing to a small panic this morning (I left a shopping bag on the train…with my digital camera battery charger in it…so had to go back to the train station and try to communicate the idea of a lost bag in mime–fortunately my hotelkeeper helped me out by explaining in Thai), I haven’t yet had time to really explore the city.

Tien