Fresh, new handcrafted textiles now online

We're delighted to bring you fresh, new textiles from our recent trip in Thailand and Laos.  Now available on TAMMACHAT's website.

All our textiles are...Artisanal. Handwoven. Fair trade. Sustainable. Ethical. Eco.

Cotton Scarves and Shawls: handspun, chunky textures, organic cotton, lots of indigo.

Organic Silk Scarves: beautiful, beautiful, beautiful in a lovely range of colours.

 Eri Silk Scarves: handspun, textured, for women and men.

And the Blossom Travel Jewelry Pouch in Organic Silk is here and ready for you!

Drop by TAMMACHAT's website to find more offerings over the next few weeks. Follow us on Facebook  and Twitter for timely postings.

Saoban: development with a heart

The capital of Laos, Vientiane, is increasingly a city of contradictions. Our annual visits sound discordant notes that grow shriller with each new year. Gleaming luxury cars (this year I saw a Lotus!) park next to broken sidewalks that expose the stinking sewer beneath. I imagine an unwary tourist falling into one of these manhole-sized openings while gawking at the cake-like decorations that frost the Buddhist temples.

Tourists' cafe tables sprout bottles of Lao beer -- as tasty as it is cheap -- while Asean businessmen savour European wines. The menus of the newer restaurants in the old city centre boast bottles of wine that sell for $100 -- in a country where $50 will feed an impoverished family for a month.

Amidst these anomalies is the fair trade social enterprise that we've come to see. Saoban, meaning "village people," has grown out of earlier sustainability projects in the Lao countryside. Many of these were the work of a local NGO, the Participatory Development Training Centre (PADTEC).

Saoban ("Village Handicrafts From the Heart of Laos") now stands on its own feet, which ideally is the goal of all development projects. It works closely with village artisan groups in many regions of this diverse and mountainous country to provide training in business planning, product development, marketing, and access to micro-credit. In its Vientiane shop we see elaborate tapestry weaving, precious silver jewellery, intricate bamboo basketry and bags of many descriptions.

Saoban's Vientiane shop brimming with handcrafted products

We met Saoban in 2009 when they were establishing their store in Vientiane. That year we accompanied one of their young staff on a visit to a small village several hours outside Vientiane where the women weave intricate bamboo baskets. We were impressed with everything we saw, especially the absence of toxic chemicals often used to produce bamboo fibres. Together we designed a bag that combined the villagers' basket-making skills with indigo cotton produced by another village and sewn by a third group. We also arranged for a Big Brother Mouse book party in the village later that year (and provided the funds for same.)

This year, however, we have come to find products woven from organic cotton dyed with natural indigo. In planning for this visit, we had a meeting on Skype (amazing that we can do some of this work from afar), while we sat in Chiang Mai, Thailand and Bandith Ladpakdy, Saoban's Manager, spoke to us from the shop in Vientiane.

softly draping, handspun organic cotton indigo shawl

We're delighted to find that we do not need to make a special order: on the shop's shelves we find almost everything that we had imagined we might design together. iPad pouches in indigo cotton yarn dyed with mudmee (ikat) designs are displayed almost exactly as we had imagined them! The heritage variety of organic cotton used is inter-planted with upland crops of indigo, corn, beans and chilies. The weaving is done in Central Laos, in an area known for its indigo dyeing. Products like these are then sewn by an urban sewing group in Vientiane, where most of the women work at home.

quilted iPad sleeves in organic cotton

Nubbly, handspun organic cotton scarves and shawls in an assortment of naturally dyed colours are nestled into a large bamboo basket that greets us as we walk in the door.

organic cotton scarves in a handwoven bamboo basket

There are even 2 extraordinary handspun organic cotton shawls, yarn-dyed with traditional mudmee designs in a beautiful mid-range shade of indigo.

rich traditional mudmee design in handspun organic cotton

We spend 2 afternoons at the shop. This is the first opportunity we've had to get to know Shui-Meng Ng, who has worked in development with rural Lao families for decades and is now serving as the Managing Director of the independent enterprise that Saoban has become.

Bandith helps village weavers and dyers organize themselves into groups, select their leaders, learn about business planning and how to set realistic, fair prices for their work. Through his work with more than 300 artisans in 14 villages, he is becoming an important local resource. Bandith is also a key figure in a new Lao Fairtrade association formed by and for Lao social enterprises to support each other and learn about fair trade together.

The Saoban team: Bandith, a volunteer from Australia, Shui-Meng and Samoy

While our focus for this visit has been on handspun, indigo organic cotton, we are also keen to learn that village-based organic silk production is again on the rise after decades of dwindling resources and practitioners. This news prompts us to add to our shopping list an elegant but simply designed silk scarf  in naturally dyed shades of gleaming, burnished metals.

hand-reeled organic silk with weft bands from the looser, outer fluff of the cocoons

We look forward to continue building our relationship with Saoban and visiting some of the more remote villages with Bandith in coming years. Until then, we are anxious to share our indigo Laotian treasures, and a bit more, with fans in Canada.

Also: See our video about a Weaving Bamboo Baskets in Laos.

Alleson

Weaving Beautiful Cloth -- Fair trade organic silk in Thailand’s Northeast

[First posted online on DaisyGreen Magazine in spring 2010.]

Text and photos by Ellen Agger
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As we drive into Nawn Thoong village in Thailand’s northeast province of Khon Kaen, Pii Yai is excited. She has served for many years on the board of directors of Prae Pan Group, a women’s weaving co-operative in Thailand’s northeast, whose staff set up our visits today to three villages where members live and work.

We gather across the street at the house of Mae Pit, a long-time Prae Pan member. She and the four other members sit on a mat next to the house, protected from the glaring sun. They’re in their late 50s. These are the silk weavers in the village. Like most of Prae Pan’s members, they are farmers who fit weaving around their farming chores and care for their children, grandchildren and elders. Weaving brings in much needed additional income, used to send their children to trade school or university, for health care and to improve their lives in the village.

By belonging to the co-op they are paid for their work as soon as they deliver it to the group’s shop in Khon Kaen city. Members are proud that the co-op owns this shop, reflecting the group’s goal of being self-sufficient.

Co-op membership gives members the chance to work with customers like TAMMACHAT Natural Textiles which pays 50% in advance for orders. “On our annual visits with groups like Prae Pan, we deepen our relationships,” says TAMMACHAT co-founder Alleson Kase. “This year we are learning more about the group’s capacity to weave organic, naturally dyed silk fabric for the growing eco-textile market. We have also started to collaborate on designing bags for the North American market.”

Co-op membership has also given members a market for their weaving well beyond what they would otherwise be able to reach as individuals. They are keen to learn more about the markets in our country, as they don’t often have the chance to meet directly with foreign customers of the co-op.

We ask the women gathered today if they are passing on their skills, learned from their mothers. Now their daughters are going off to earn their livings in the cities or on to further schooling. These skills are at risk of being lost, we’re told again and again on visits like these.

Sometimes younger women do return to their village when their children are small, preferring a quieter life where they have family support networks. “When I was young,” says one of the women, “I went away to work in a factory. Then I came back to my village. At home, you’re free. I can farm and I’m happier.”

After choosing samples of silk yarns of some of the colours they can produce in this village, we thank the women, jump in Pii Yai’s truck and arrive a short time later in Nom Thoom village. We stop at the house of Mae Nung who is feeding organic mulberry leaves to heritage silkworms in baskets her husband has woven. She sits behind blue netting that protects the sensitive silkworms from exposure to diseases and chemicals like cigarette smoke. “Raising silkworms is like raising babies,” she says. The resulting silk yarns, painstakingly reeled by hand, are produced organically, we learn, protecting both the women’s health and their local environment.

We meet with 10 women, ranging in age from mid-forties to over 70. For all the women, this work brings income to the family. For some, it’s more. “If I don’t weave,” says Mae Som, age 49, “I cannot sleep.” Mae Tong Luan tells us, “It’s important to me that I do the whole cycle of production. It’s a circle.”

In neighbouring Suk Som Boon village, Mae Nung practices this full circle. She grows the mulberry bushes to feed the silkworms, hand reels and twists silk yarns, dyes them with natural dyes that she has grown or gathered in the wild, and weaves. It’s time consuming work. It takes 2 months to produce 12 handwoven, naturally dyed silk scarves, 3 months to produce 40 metres of organic silk fabric.



We watch as Mae Pan cuts the reddish green leaves of “maak yao.” She has a new recipe to create a luminescent green. She dips the silk yarns in the simmering dye bath twice, then gets help from Mae Pet, the president of Prae Pan, to straighten the fine yarns and then they hang them to dry.

Preserving these traditional skills – and bringing income to women in Thailand and Laos’s rural areas – is what’s behind TAMMACHAT’s work. “Fair trade is about much more than paying fairly for the work,” says Alleson. “It’s about respecting the people who do the work, learning from each other and supporting sustainable practices. It makes a real difference in the lives of these women,” she adds.

“Our weavers are very proud when they can weave cloth beautiful enough to attract customers,” Mae Pet tells us. And well they should be.

For more info, visit TAMMACHAT Natural Textiles and Prae Pan Group.

#5: Happy In: visiting Panmai Group

When we visit Panmai Group, we get a bit farther off the track; their office is located so it's convenient for their members rather than their customers. From Bangkok it's a train, then a bus and finally a songtheow to get there. [A songteow is a pickup truck fitted with 2 bench seats and a roof. It serves as a shared taxi and usually has an established route in areas too marginal to have bus routes.] This year we shared the songteow with 30 other passengers, mostly young teenagers travelling back to their villages on a Friday late afternoon.

The weather was fine and the roads were paved so it was all good, if a little crowded. At our destination, we checked into "The Happy In" (sic): a 'no-tell mo-tel' where clients' vehicles are discreetly parked behind hot pink curtains, rooms are equipped with large horizontal mirrors and condoms are free. We're told that it's also the only accommodation in town that has hot water showers and air conditioners. We appreciate the hot water and laugh about the rest, as do the locals when they ask us where we're staying.

The best part of the story, however, is the fact that Panmai seems to be doing better every time we visit them. Or perhaps the best part is the incredible colours that the group's members are able to achieve when they dye their village-raised, organic silk with local barks and other plant stuffs.

Regardless, the 2 days we spent with their 3 staff women were very productive. We chose more than 100 beautiful silk scarves in nature's rich shades of magenta and burnt orange, cedar and salmon, indigo and ebony. We also created and assembled 3 palettes of our popular silk squares (275 pieces!) including 2 new mudmee patterns -- one in a frosted cherry and one in a spray of spring leaves. (You'll have to wait to see these new palettes in person, but we'll have them on our website in April.)

We also discussed world economic trends with the office staff; all of us strategizing about sustaining our businesses in this time of economic downturns. They told us how important their export customers are for them and explained their new pricing structure that discounts domestic sales to remain competitive. We assured them that we were OK with the price differential that results in approximately 15% higher prices for their foreign customers, pricing more in line with what the weavers think they really should be receiving for their work.

We, in turn, explained that we could choose slightly narrower and/or shorter scarves, sizes which are actually well suited to our customers' tastes, and thereby maintain a lower price per item despite the double whammy of the Canadian's dollar's decline and the economic downturn.

By the end of the 2nd day, after much sticky rice and really spicy papaya salad, and after much translating, laughing and productive labour, we saw our box of treasures go off to the post office, said our goodbyes andf got onto the next bus, headed east-southeast to Ubon.

We left with the good feeling that TAMMACHAT, along with Panmai, will likely find a way through these economic troubles: not by squeezing our suppliers but by finding fair ways to keep prices in line with our customers' means.

Pop gan mai (Until next time),

Pii Plaa (aka Alleson)

#4: Pa Ao Weaving Group: silk specialists

Two years ago, we rented a motorbike in the small city of Ubon Ratchathani, close to the Mekong River in Thailand's Northeast, and made our way -- with the help of a map and a hunch -- to Ban Pa Ao, a village known for its fine quality of silk weaving. When we found the village, we found it home to a large, village-based women's weaving group. We had also hoped to find naturally dyed silks there and were not disappointed.

This group is one of many that has received OTOP recognition. OTOP -- One Tamboon, One Product -- is a program started many years ago by a previous government. It gives star ratings to products that range from foods to simple handicrafts to superb textiles, designating products considered outstanding in each district. The Pa Ao Weaving Group, which also refers to itself as Glum Satrii (Homemakers' Group), has received 4 and 5 star OTOP ratings in past years for its superlative weaving.

On that first visit, we bought several naturally dyed silk scarves from the group's village shop. Unlike any designs we'd seen before, these scarves showcased mudmee designs (the tie-dyeing of the thread prior to weaving) with a seldom-seen contemporary flare.


We had hoped to meet this group again at last year's OTOP fair in Bangkok. Remarkably, we did find the group amongst the hundreds of stalls at last year's fair but they didn't have the scarves we were searching for and we were unable to describe them well enough to make an order.





Which brings this post to yesterday, when we set out on another rented motorbike in search of these unusual scarves. We arrived in the early afternoon to find 3 very helpful women at the Ban Pa Ao weaving shop but not the elusive scarves.

Rather than trying to persuade us to consider the conventionally dyed scarves that some of their members continue to produce, the staff took the opportunity to bring out some extraordinary, handwoven, naturally dyed silk fabrics that are available by the metre. We couldn't resist buying 5 particularly beautiful pieces (3 of which are shown below). These will be available upon our return home to Canada in April.

This piece has an amazing sheen with small vertical stripes. It's dyed with indigo and coconut husks soaked until the colour leaches into the water.







This piece is woven in a delicate flower pattern called dok pikhuun. It has a soft gray colour that is created with a dried fruit that is then boiled, pounded and soaked until the dye bath is ready.







This piece has a delicate shimmer obtained with jackfruit wood, another wood called prahot and coconut husk. The colours are made stronger by the addition of sai bua in which the silk yarns are soaked for a few days. It uses a mudmee design in the umber and pale green stripes, twisted threads and a white weft (cross-wise threads), which gives the shimmer.




Because we follow a fair trade model, we wanted to learn not just about these production details but also about the group which has mastered them: the group with whom we are working to establish a relationship. Here's some of what we've learned:

• The group was started 22 years ago.
• Ten years ago, it had 75 members and has since grown to 108, all local Pa Ao village residents.
• Group members use chemical dyes and natural dyes, particularly local materials like kram (indigo), lac (which produces lovely pinks and reds) and magrua (ebony black). They have since learned to dye with other natural materials, such as coconut and jackfruit wood.
• All dye materials are gathered locally.

At the group's shop and weaving centre, we were shown samples of dye materials and silk yarns that had been dyed with them. Here you see Alleson and Nan, a group member, looking at samples of natural dye baths prepared by local students.

Our visit was not quite what we had expected but this is always part of the fun. Thanks to Alleson's ability to speak Thai, we learned more about the group and how they make such delicate colours using natural dyes from their local environment. Thanks also to her ability to read Thai (albeit slowly), we also learned the Thai names of several dye materials new to us.

Each new word helps us communicate better with the Thai weavers from whom we buy textiles. (My Thai is still rudimentary but my ability to understand and speak grows slowly, but daily, as we travel.) Being able to communicate, even a little, with the weavers enriches our understanding of their traditions and practices. It also allows us to bring you more stories about the creation of these incredible fibre arts.

Nok Noi (aka Ellen)

#3: Prae Pan Group in Thailand

In our last post we affirmed our desire to support the highly skilled women who continue their tradition of creating silk and cotton yarn, natural dyeing and hand weaving despite the challenges posed by globalized modernization and the current economic downturn.

A case in point was our recent visit to the Prae Pan Group in Khon Kaen, Thailand, which we first visited 4 years ago. They still produce beautiful weaving, still have an impressive inventory of finished pieces and still have an active storefront in Khon Kaen, which is Thailand's 4th largest city. However, despite 2 decades of success, this group is finding it increasingly difficult to stay afloat.

Khon Kaen, by the way, is one of our favorite Thai cities. There's a large park with a small lake in town that Ellen is happy to walk around every morning and a large number of tasty noodle shops and khaow mun gai stalls where we can have cheap and tasty meals. It appears that very few tourists visit Khon Kaen, which may help explain why most people there are extremely welcoming to us. However, this also means that there are very few tourists, foreign or Thai, visiting the Prae Pan shop. It's not surprising that sales are down.

The bulk of the people in Khon Kaen province are rice farmers who live outside the provincial capital. More and more often, their young people are moving to urban areas where they can experience urban life and modern trends. At the same time, many factories are opening in the rural provinces where there's a surplus of labourers accustomed to hard work and low wages. All of these reasons add up to a growing pessimism whether rural women's groups like Prae Pan are actually sustainable and whether younger women will have learned the necessary skills to continue the tradition before their mothers and grandmothers are no longer available to teach them.

Consequently, we've decided this year to focus our selection of Prae Pan's work on a traditional style of khit weaving (using supplementary wefts), which the group's board members tell us may not be available in the coming years. We've selected ancestral patterns with design qualities that transcend their original meanings so to be appreciated by those outside the culture which produced them. We've also chosen sizes and colours that are well-suited to decorate tables, chests and dressers. We hope you'll agree.

Pii Plaa (aka Alleson)

#2: The future of handweaving in Thailand

[Photo: Alleson and Pii Yai -- who has been working in rural development for decades and who has been advising one of the weaving co-ops we have been working with for several years -- enjoying a walk in Loei province.]



One of our goals for this trip is to get a sense of where handweaving is going in Thailand. We've been discussing this with our Thai friends and some of the weavers we meet. The conversation is never a simple one as the topic is situated in the larger issue of industrialization and modernization in a 'globalized' world. And, of course, as elsewhere in the world, the global economic downturn is affecting people in Thailand.




An article in the Dec. 21, 2008 Bangkok Post (Thailand's biggest English-language daily newspaper) caught our attention and confirmed what our friends here have been telling us for some time. Entitled "Growing debt forcing rice farmers to put their farmlands up for sale," the article discussed how skyrocketing rice prices did not offset the rising costs of farming (higher production costs, including fertilizer, pesticides* and land rental costs) because most of the price rise went to millers, wholesalers and exporters.

At the same time, everyone in Thailand eats rice as their staple food, so any increase in the price of rice results in inflation across-the-board. So, almost everything has gone up in price -- except factory wages where, instead, there have been significant layoffs, especially in the auto (and related) industry.

The director-general of Thailand's Rice Department said that "in order to find a way out of their debts, many people have decided to sell their farmlands and leave the villages for the cities in search of jobs in the hope of finding a better future."

Most of the weaving groups we buy from are village-based groups, which means they primarily make their living by farming, usually farming rice.

The future of handweaving in Thailand is very much connected with these trends. Fewer and fewer women in the villages are continuing to weave. Some are leaving the villages for waged labour. Younger women are not continuing their foremothers' weaving traditions for a number of reasons, including a drive to modernization that values this work less. The cost of materials is rising, including cotton and silk yarns that must be bought from the market or from other groups. Thai customers are less interested in traditional weaving than before, and generally have less money to spend on it. So, while international markets become more important, village women are not any better suited to reach them, due to enduring limitations of cultural, technical and language skills.

How does this affect what TAMMACHAT Natural Textiles is doing? It means that we are more determined than before to support the women who continue to do this work. We are buying more of the traditional designs this year (such as the khit weaving, shown on the left and below, which are designs created on the loom by highly skilled and mature weavers who may not be able pass on those skills.) At the same time, we look for weaving that fits into our own cultural context (e.g., that we know our Canadian and U.S. customers will find useful as well as attractive.)

While we continue to build relationships with the groups we already know and buy from, we're also finding new groups and new designers so we can bring fresh work home with us. We plan to make these available through the special textile fairs that we organize, through the events that we're invited to speak at (check our website under "Services" for more information) and through our online shop.


We hope you will help us support Thai and Laotian weavers by buying their wonderful handwoven pieces when we bring them back with us!



Nok Noi & Pii Plaa



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* Note: We try to buy organically produced textiles as often as we can find them, so we support the weavers' attempts to keep their costs down and to lower their exposure -- and that of their environments -- to harmful chemicals.