Grand Palace, Great Museum

Grand Palace, Great Museum

The Queen Sirikit Museum of Textiles

The Grand Palace in Bangkok is overwhelming. As you may know, it’s not “just” a palace, but a large complex of buildings constructed over time, far too much to take in during one visit. My photography skills, limited as they are, weren’t up to the task of capturing my impressions either, but here are a few images that turned out well enough.

I don’t remember which building this is, but the Demon Guards are formidable and the roof is beautiful. You see similar statues guarding other buildings in the Royal Palace complex and at many historic sites in Thailand.

How this handsome Chinese guard got here is another mystery, but he was too photogenic to be ignored.

In one area, a number of irresistible golden statues are grouped. The figures are either part human and part animal, like the lion-tail girl, or part animal and part demon, like the chicken-tail guy – I think.  Sometimes it’s hard to tell which is which – but the figures are very lovely and mystifying.

The demons holding up the chedi (a Buddhist shrine) got my attention too – I hope the artists who created them enjoyed making them so beautiful and sinister.

 Before long, my camera ran out of battery, sparing me the trouble of trying to find angles for decent photos.  After making our way around the complex and dutifully checking off most places on the map, a friend and I had some expensive but excellent ice cream before deciding to take in the Queen Sirikit Museum of Textiles. It was a good decision. The museum is air conditioned and arranged in an orderly fashion, so it was a great antidote to the sprawling monumental grandeur outside in the hot sun. It wasn’t very crowded; and taking pictures is not allowed, which is too bad in a way, but also good because everyone concentrates on the exhibits, not on taking pictures. Finally, and more to the point, the museum gives you a good introduction to HM the Queen and her patronage of Thai arts and crafts.

As you might expect, one part of the exhibits consists of dresses and suits that HM the Queen wore to important events during the years when she and HM the King were most active, beginning in the 1960s. She wanted her wardrobe to incorporate elements of traditional Thai clothing and styles, such as the shoulder cloth (prae wa), the wrap skirt (phaa sin – a wrapped straight skirt), and the hip wrapper (phaa nung – wrapped and tucked to create pleats at the hips).  You can see examples on the museum web site if you are interested: http://www.qsmtthailand.org/collection_main/

The web site is interactive, so you can click on images to see details.

The exhibits also tell about the international designers with whom HM the Queen and her staff worked to create the fashions she wore (she was named to the Best Dressed Hall of Fame in 1965) and about different kinds of Thai silk. The most famous Thai silk is mat mii (also called Ikat), made of tie-dyed silk yarn, a process that requires great skill on the part of the dyer/weaver. The silk strands are wrapped and tied at intervals before being dyed, and unwrapped after being dyed. The pattern then emerges during the weaving, yielding a fabric with a characteristic shimmer from the yellow of the undyed sections of the silk. Here is a link to a YouTube video that shows you how it is done:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nsv1ITCrD_8

The most eye-opening parts of the exhibit were the videos and documentaries about projects that Their Majesties undertook to help poor people become more self-sufficient. In the videos you see them touring various “upcountry” areas of Thailand – predominantly agricultural areas in the north and northeast.  The videos document HM the Queen’s interest in collecting fabrics created by weavers in remote villages in order to locate and preserve traditional textiles. Some of the traditional weaves were incorporated into the fabrics the Queen chose for her official wardrobe. Typical patterns are from nature (flowers, leaves, seeds) arranged in a repeating diamond shape. Two examples that you see a lot in Thai silk are a four-petal flower and “heads of rice,” sometimes with a pattern of vines, enclosed in the diamond figure. You can see examples of these and other patterns on the museum web site.

HM the Queen encouraged many weavers and other artisans (mostly women) to earn extra income to support their families by making and selling their crafts.  She bought many of their products herself. In 1976 she created a foundation with the acronym SUPPORT, which stands for SUPPlmental Occupations and Related Techniques. Its purpose is to support and promote folk arts and crafts, and preserve them for the future. There is a training component for people who want to learn new techniques and a program to help artisans, such as weavers, obtain better equipment so they can increase their production and better support their families.  It’s moving to hear the women interviewed in the videos tell about how they were helped by HM the Queen’s patronage, and how much respect they have for her.  Seeing the exhibits, I understood why HM the Queen is so loved and revered by many Thais.

To conclude, I’m posting a picture of my landlady at the loom that stands between our two houses. She is weaving a more utilitarian fabric, not one for royal wardrobes – but I like to think that if she had been weaving 50 years ago, she might have met HM the Queen on one of her tours of the northeast.

 For the record: HM the Queen is not the only patron of Thai silk.  One you may have heard of was an American businessman named Jim Thompson, who brought Thai silk to international attention after WWII.  There is a museum about his work, the Jim Thompson House, in Bangkok that I haven’t visited yet – maybe soon! Stay tuned.