Newsletter 1: Apr 08

April 2008

Welcome to my first newsletter.

We ended 2007 with a tour to the North and Northeast of Thailand and Laos. The group of twelve, including me as organiser and leader, started our tour in Bangkok by meeting Keosiri, a Laotian textile expert and collector in her lovely house for an introductory talk on the textiles of Vientiane and Luang Prabang. She showed us her private collection and prepared us well for our visit to Laos, and she was also kind and generous enough to allow us to photograph the pieces. While in Bangkok, we also had the good fortune to see Weaving Paradise: South-East Asian Textiles and their Creators, an exhibition from the Tilleke and Gibbons textile collection, which was on at the Jim Thompson Art Centre. Linda Macintosh, the curator, gave us a tour and answered the many questions regarding textile techniques and traditions: most certainly a worthwhile opportunity.

In Isarn, the Northeast of Thailand, we were welcomed in Ubon to the home of Khun Meechai, which is rarely opened to the public. Khun Meechai is a talented young designer, renowned for his exquisite silk ikat and brocade weaving. His designs, both new and traditional, are woven by his weavers and apprentices in a cool and pleasant environment. We received huge generosity and hospitality as we shared our enthusiasm for cloth.

In a village in Udornthani, in the northern part of the Northeast, some 50 kilometres from the Lao border, we had a session on dyeing with indigo, and from the village weavers we bought cotton indigo matmee (a Thai word for ikat) which they weave themselves in a kind of co-operative. The matmee was so cheap that we wondered how they could make a living. In truth they don’t. Village people often weave for themselves and weaving provides a supplementary income; rice farming is still the main source of income. The headman of the village, bemused by our frantic buying, kindly took us round the village and the rice fields, which were golden brown, ready for harvesting. Like so many parts of the country, the village had suffered from drought this year, and did not expect as high a yield as in previous years.

Laos produced many wonderful and interesting visits to silk-weaving and natural dye workshops. We met makers and locals in Vientiane and Xiang Khouang, where we visited the Plain of Jars, and a Tai Puan village. It is important to point out that families were separated and many people lost their lives here during the secret wars in Laos in the 1960s and 70s; Xiang Khouang was more or less wiped out. More bombs were dropped on Laos than on Germany in the whole of the Second World War. Empty bomb casings, used as fencing, house posts and anything else you can imagine, can be seen everywhere in the villages in the area.

The highlight of the tour, certainly for some of the group, was a practical workshop specially arranged on matmee and dyeing by the banks of the Mekhong river in Luang Prabang – and that’s without mentioning that one of the group, who used to have a canal boat in the UK, had the wonderful experience of guiding our boat along the Mekhong by herself (with a little help from the pilot nearby) to the Pak Ou caves. The boat ride was one of our most pleasant experiences, and we all thoroughly enjoyed it.

Another experience we shan’t forget was the river crossing arranged by kind villagers whom we visited just outside Xiang Khouang. A few of the group were nervous of going back over the bridge to the village, which though safe, was nevertheless old and a bit rickety. So the villagers provided an “iron buffalo” tractor and trailer to take us through the river, a real bone-shaking experience, but a ridiculous, hilarious, perfectly spontaneous and absolutely unforgettable one.

Back in Chiangmai, we had a lecture on the Tai Puan people and their textiles from Patricia Cheeseman, the author of many books on the textiles of South-East Asia, a lecture which put what we had seen into a wider, more meaningful context. We ended the tour by celebrating Loy Kratong with the local people, floating kratong on the river and sending hot air lanterns up into the night sky.

At home, the conversion of our last rice-barn, completed in time for Christmas, has given us more double accommodation and a lovely work space. There’s also a wet area for dyeing and paper-making in the garden nearby. The first residential workshop – Working with Silk in Contemporary Patchwork Quilts, – which lasted ten days, was held in February this year for six people from the UK. The workshop was taught by me, and offered a practical approach to handling silk, exploring its sheen and colours, as well as encouraging students to develop their own ideas and explore possibilities for their own work. The aim was to let people work with their own ideas at their own pace in peaceful and natural surroundings. A few sessions of yoga exercise in the morning, plus traditional Thai massage, were provided to ease the tension of having to bend over to draw and stitch. Full board of healthy home-cooked Thai food was provided throughout the stay.

… the “work” was sheer pleasure … JB

… with inspiration and guidance I have finished a piece …a fabulous ten days, superb hospitality, beautiful surroundings … CP

… a healing time and a steep learning curve … not to be forgotten … EC

… I have just loved the fabulous coloured silks … Siripan;s cooking is five-star … MH

The next newsletter will be on Myanmar (Burma), and my plans for the next tour. The tour will focus on the unique Myanmar luntaya acheiq, a form of tapestry weaving which uses as many as 200 shuttles. The other unique textile from Myanmar is from the Shan State on Inle Lake, where the Intha people use silk from lotus stems which they cultivate to weave into cloth, traditionally for monks’ robes. Today it is produced more commercially, though it is not widely known.

Myanmar’s cities are full of pagodas and temples, thousands in ruins, but stunning to see. The people are generous and friendly; it is a pity that they have such an appalling government. I shall discuss the pros and cons of visiting Myanmar in the next newsletter also.

I am currently working on a piece of work to be exhibited in York at the new headquarters of the UK Quilters Guild; the exhibition will be open to the public from June 8 until September. If you happen to be travelling up North, please drop by. See also the Guild website (www.quiltersguild.org.uk) for more information.

If you have any comments on this newsletter or on any other matters, I’d be pleased to hear from you. You can contact me on siripankidd AT yahoo.com (substituting @ for AT). Please check my website for details (Coming Events) of tours and workshops for 2008/2009.

Siripan

www.siripankidd.com

Text and images © Siripan Kidd 2008