#10: Eri Silk: Peace Silk from Thailand

Dec. 22, 2009

It’s almost dusk when we arrive at the Traditional House Museum set in the grounds of Chiang Mai University Art Centre. We've come to attend The Living Seeds Festival, hosted by Pun Pun, a sustainable living centre located outside the city. It has brought together organic farmers, mud house builders, musicians and educators to celebrate and teach about sustainable living.

Under one of the traditional teak houses raised on posts, we find Thitichai, a 45-year-old Thai textile designer, surrounded by some of his naturally dyed textiles. We browse through the scarves hanging on a twine line and find an unusual, highly textured piece. We know it's not traditional mulberry silk, yet it is different from other natural fibres we've seen here. It turns out to be handspun Eri silk, which was introduced into Thailand a few years ago. [See our blog entry of Feb.3, 2008 on Eri silk.] Thitichai tells us that Eri slk is now created in 16 villages around Thailand, thanks to trainings done by Fai Gaem Mai, Knowledge and Technology Center for Northern Textile at Chiang Mai University.

We're fascinated to see the Eri silkworms spinning their white cocoons in a makeshift cocoon house on top of a table. It's made from a cardboard box which has been refashioned with cardboard dividers to create 2 by 2 inch "rooms" in which lie small, plump white silkworms and the beginnings of their cocoons. Next to their home sits a small bamboo basket of fresh green leaves. These small worms are very different from the huge Eri silkworms we saw in Ban Panasawan. We wonder if the difference in size is due to the different leaves they are fed here. We ask Thitichai if he eats the pupa and he assures us that no worms are killed in the production of this particular Eri silk (unlike the village we visited, where the pupae are eaten as an important source of protein). Like some Tussah silks from India, this Eri silk can be called "peace silk" or "vegetarian silk."

I'm drawn back again and again to this scarf, with its bands of dove gray created from ebony fruit alternating with the softer very pale, creamy gray of the undyed silk. The texture is marvelous. The warp (lengthwise) yarns are long, thin slivers. They have been painstakingly spun on the special spinning wheel introduced into Thailand by Fai Gaem Mai. The weft (crosswise) yarns show off the slubs -- thick, then thin sections -- that are a trademark of good Eri silk spinning. Together, they give the illusion of great depth and intricate weaving, created by the use of alternating rows of 2 colours of weft yarns.

The scarf is costly, due to the work of spinning these special yarns. I love the look and feel, so I buy it for myself. We talk with Thitichai about the possibility of returning on Monday to discuss an order for more. He seems reluctant at first, but then agrees to weave a small order of 10 scarves for us that will be ready in 2 months. Can we wait? Yes, of course. It takes the time it takes. "Slow fashion" indeed!

On Monday afternoon we return to the house where we now find Thitichai sitting upstairs on the porch that wraps around 2 sides of the building. We learn more about him over the course of a couple of hours and decide that, although we usually buy from rural women's weaving groups to give them much-needed income, this is a valuable project to support, as it's helping establish new traditions and artistry for the village weavers, built on the foundation of their age-old skills.

Fascinated by textiles at an early age, Thitichai studied with Mrs. Saeng-da Bunsiddhi, the founder of the Pa Da Cotton Textile Museum. [See our #6 blog entry about her.] He has a workshop just down the road from Pa Da -- a weaving centre with 30 floor looms, now employing 10 weavers, whom he gives creative reign to experiment with their own designs. He has won many international awards for his textile designs in Japan and Europe, including placing in the top 10 at a UNESCO textile competition.

He has also helped many Thai weaving projects. After winning an award from the King of Thailand for this work, he left his textile work behind to enter the monastery, becoming a monk and meditation teacher for 8 years. Now, returning to his passion for textiles, he runs the Living Textile Museum as part of the Traditional House Museum, where he teaches Eri sericulture (the creation of silk yarns), spinning and natural dyeing. He travels too to other parts of Thailand, teaching Eri silk skills as a volunteer. Thitichai's eyes dance and his laughter rings out as he tells his story and lovingly shows us the textiles that drape over every surface of the room next to the porch where we first talk.

Thitichai's work now is to promote "living textiles," helping spread new sericulture, spinning, dyeing and weaving techniques -- creating new ways for village weavers to earn income. He loves working with Fai Gaem Mai, he tells us, and we're happy to support his work, even on a small scale with our small order, which he insists on spinning and weaving himself to ensure the highest quality. We suspect we'll see, in future, more of this kind of Eri silk here, as the weavers' skills grow and the weaving itself evolves with visions of creative new designs.

Ellen (Nok Noi)

#9: Suchada Cotton: Hearing the Story Again

Dec. 18, 2009

The colour indigo -- painstakingly made from the leaves of the indigo plant (Indigofera tinctoria) -- conjures a depth of blue that can't be achieved with chemical dyes. Repeated dippings of cotton yarns, sometimes more than 20 times, can produce a blue so deep that it appears black. More importantly, traditional cultures on every continent have attached significance to indigo beyond a colouring agent.

We first met Suchada Cotton at the Sunday Walking Market in Chiang Mai last year. Their placemats in deep blues and rich browns snagged our attention as the dyestuffs that produce these colours are not frequently seen in Chiang Mai. More often you’ll see mor hom -- a blue cotton fabric produced in Prae from a "cousin" of indigo.

Conversely, Sakhon Nakhon province in Isaan (the Northeast) is well-known in Thailand for kram -- the Thai word for authentic indigo. This province is also home to the village dyers and weavers who produce Suchada Cotton's fabrics. Combined with the bark of the mango tree, indigo produces a deep green, also a popular colour for Suchada's many handwoven products. The rich coffee browns, the third in their trio of signature colours, comes from ma-kleu (Diospyros mollis), often referred to in English as Burmese ebony.

Talking later with Suchada in her stall at the Night Market, we learned that she’s from this village herself where the story is similar to the story all over rural Thailand: Most of the middle generation of women leave the village in search of factory work so they can bring a cash income to their families. Left in the village are the grandmothers and younger women with children. [Read our story about the Women's Organic Cotton Group in Ban Kokkabok for another version of this typical story.]

The 10 to 20 older women weavers and dyers in this group are rice farmers who do this work to make extra income after the harvest is brought in. These skills are a critical supplement to the family income, especially in these difficult economic times with the global recession reducing income from factory work while inflation increases prices. And Thailand's current political instability reduces tourism even farther.

The photos that Suchada showed us of women in her village show dyepots simmering over fires, leaves and barks being gathered, older women at looms. We've seen these photos before, in fact we've taken them ourselves and will, we hope, continue to see them despite the increasingly homogenous, global marketplace.

The term "slow fashion" truly describes this process of textiles produced by hand -- from the gathering of natural dyestuffs to the finished handwoven fabric, bags, scarves, placemats and tablecloths that come off the loom 2 months later.

Chiang Mai is a lively market for many goods from other parts of the country. Suchada's husband is from Chiang Mai and this link makes it an ideal place to bring the handwoven textiles as they make their way to new homes in Japan, Europe and Canada -- anywhere that natural fibres and dyes are popular.

Alleson (Pii Plaa)

#8: Hmong Flower Cloths

Dec. 15, 2009

From Chiang Mai we headed north by bus to Chiang Rai province to meet with a group of White Hmong sewers. Our plan was to make an order for several dozen "pa'ndau" -- pronounced "pan-dow" and often translated as "flower cloth" -- a style of reverse applique that decorates many items used by traditional Hmong families.

Having no written language, Hmong rituals and artistry have been vital in keeping their unique culture alive. Extraordinary needlework has long been a large part of that culture; Hmong girls traditionally begin to learn the stitches for pa'ndau embroidery as young as 5 years old.

The last few years, we've bought many flower cloths through the Queen of Thailand’s SUPPORT Project -- a handicraft development program designed to boost farm families’ welfare, provide women with an important source of income and preserve cultural artistry. The SUPPORT Project was launched in conjunction with The Thai Royal Project Foundation initiated by the King of Thailand in 1969 to encourage hilltribe villagers to switch from the cultivation of opium poppies to alternative crops.

The flower cloths we've brought to Canada are often mounted on a piece of hemp about 12" square, as hemp has traditionally been retted and woven by Hmong women as well. The squares have been very popular at our events, especially with fibre artists. Last year we paired flower cloth squares with organic cotton from the Pattanarak Foundation to make cushion covers, which were just as popular.

Last year Ellen also set herself the task of finding a Hmong sewing group from which we could buy flower cloths directly to assure ourselves that the women were paid fairly for their work. Several dead-ends later, she found Patricia Solar of Izara Arts, who was able to put us in contact with a group of Hmong sewers.

With the help of Izara Arts' production manager Muay -- and her truck -- we travelled several hours into the "Golden Triangle" where Thailand meets Burma and Laos. Once we reached the White Hmong village, we also had the help of Kamonnit (the daughter of the head of the sewing group, Mai Li), whose job in the group is communications, sales and accounts. In addition to Hmong, Kamonnit is fluent and literate in Thai, and reads and writes enough English to use email.

A small crowd of us gathered around a rickety tin table in front of a tiny house -- Ellen and I, Muay and the mother of another Izara staff person, Mai Li, Kamonnit, the 5 older Hmong sewers and a passing neighbour. There we all were, almost blocking the street of the overgrown hamlet which was once a refugee settlement, speaking 3 languages while we poured over some samples we had brought with us. We learned from the sewers which elements of the designs were easier to sew, and which would take  more time and therefore cost more. We also learned that no one in the area made hemp fabric, which we had suspected might be the case.

As we talked, Mai Li quickly folded a piece of paper and cut into it the shapes of one of the samples we had brought: a paper pattern that these skilled sewers could transform into a finished flower cloth. So this is how they make them so symmetrical, we realized. Ellen and I were both reminded of making paper snowflakes as children.

With the sewers' input, we settled on 2 designs that could be fairly made within our budget. We chose 3 colour combinations for each design and explained their complex details to Kamonnit, who carefully wrote out the 6 variations. We would buy the hemp backing cloth in Chiang Mai, where it was more readily available; they would provide the coloured cloth for the designs, as well as the accent threads, which we selected from a large plastic bag filled with a tangle of dozens of coloured threads. For extra clarity, we stapled to each colour of cloth 2 corresponding thread colours, while the sewers nodded their approval of this communication technique.

We made a 50% cash deposit, our usual fair trade practice, and took banking information to transfer the final payment directly into the group's bank account, once the order was finished. We promised to email the address where they would send the finished pieces by bus so they could be transformed into cushion covers by the Pattanarak Foundation, a non-governmental organization working on Thailand's other border with Laos, also along the Mekong.

A new challenge will be to find handwoven hemp cloth in Laos, home to many Hmong and other ethnic minorities who still  live isolated rural lives in the upland areas of that mountainous country.

Alleson (Pii Plaa)