Thousand of silkworms are munching mulberry leaves with great speed. Their appetite is much bigger than their size. In another two weeks these silkworms will spin webs around themselves and the journey of silk thread will begin.
The Northeast is usually called Isaan, which means “northeast”. It is a multi-ethnic area and each ethnic group is endowed with a rich textile and costume heritage with distinct characteristics.
The smooth silk yarn has intertwined with the lives of the people of Isaan for centuries. Through the luxurious fabric, the knowledge of sericulture and the art of weaving are handed down from generation to generation.
This is no more evident than among the Phu Tai, an ethnic group based in Ban Phon in Kalasin province’s Kham Muang district.
“Among the Phu Tai, the men weave baskets and the women weave the fabric,” says Kamsorn Srathong, 70, a skilled weaver. “Weaving is the most important skill a Phu Tai girl has to master.
“When a man proposes to a woman, she has to pay respect to her future in-laws by weaving a sin mai – a silk tube skirt – for the groom’s mother and a pha khao ma mai – a silk loincloth – for his father. If she couldn’t weave, nobody would take her as a wife.”
The Phu Tai are famous for the fabric called “prae wa”, which means “two-metre long cloth”. The women normally wear hand-woven prae wa with a reddish background and colourful pattern as a pha bien, or shawl.
Cotton prae wa is worn every day, while silk prae wa is used on special occasions like weddings. Her Majesty the Queen was impressed with the colourful and delicate patterns and encouraged the Phu Tai to create more fashionable background colours and make the cloth bigger so it could be cut for dresses and shirts.
Kamsorn can weave all 60 traditional patterns of prae wa and is passing on her knowledge to the younger generation.
“It’s easier to teach the girls because they’ve all see their mothers weaving since they were babies.”
The criss-crossed silk thread leads us to Ban Chan-Rom in Surin province’s Muang district, famous for its Khmer-style patterns. The best known styles are pha hol and phaam prom.
Pha hol is a tie-dyed, patterned cloth that comes in two patterns: hol sarei for women and hol proh for men.
Phaam prom, also tie-dyed, has white dots forming small crosses against a dark background.
“You don’t like the pomelos? You can eat these silkworms after I get all the thread out of them,” says Rieng Lamaiwan, 77, as she spins thread from silkworms boiling in a pot.
I grin and immediately stuff my mouth with a handful of pomelo.
Our next stop in Surin is the Chan Soma weaving centre at Ban Tha Sawang in Muang district. This place is responsible for making golden brocade for the royal court.
In the old days, fabric was a status symbol. Different ranks of officials wore different patterns at royal ceremonies. Some types – such as pha yok thong, the golden brocade, and the garuda pattern – were reserved for the royal family.
Weeratham Tragoonngernthaihas revived the art of golden brocade and design sophisticated patterns for the court. He uses shiny and soft mai noi, the finest thread from the inner part of the silkworm cocoons.
He reproduces the delicate patterns on the gleaming golden brocade from the costume of royal characters in ancient murals and ancient paintings.
Before weaving, the thread is dyed or tie-dyed with natural colourings: red from stick lac, yellow from ermaginate wood or jackfruit, green from Indian almond, and blue from indigo.
His renowned 1,416-heddles weaving technique requires four to eight people per loom, depending on the complexity of the pattern, and generally produces five centimetres of material a day.
The loom has to be two or three metres above ground to accommodate the length of the threads in the wire heddles that guide them.
In the weaving process, at least two people have to raise the heddles above the loom, one person to harness the heddle from below and another person to weave.
“Weaving gold brocade, we have to use golden thread, but it’s not available in Thailand, so we have to order it from France,” said Nirun Sailektim, an apprentice at Chan Soma.
“The historical evidence shows that the southern part of Thailand could produce the golden thread, but nowadays we can’t find any.”
Ban Khampun in Ban Kham Kwang in Ubon Ratchathani’s Warin
Chumrab district is a private textile museum that’s open only once a year. at Buddhist Lent.
Owner Meechai Taesujariya and his mother created the famous pha kab bua pattern adopted as the province’s official cloth. Its name means “lotus spathe cloth” (the spathe being part of the plant that has its own pattern and colour), which fits well with the province’s name, which translates as “land of the lotus”.
“Actually, we get the name pha kab bua from the ancient literature of Isaan,” says Meechai. “The legendary fabric doesn’t exist anymore.”
Pha kab bua can be made of silk or cotton, depending on the wearer’s taste. The basic pattern consists of two-coloured warp threads and the weft using mudmee tie-dyed thread.
Two other delicate patterns are pha kab bua chok and pha kab bua kam, or golden brocade. Pha kab bua chok adds chok dao or ko dao, a supplementary star-shaped pattern. Chok dao is a unique pattern of the sin hua chok dao, the star-shaped pattern tube skirt of Ubon Ratchathani.
Pha kab bua kam requires a master weaver using the yok technique, sometimes called khit, to create a sophisticated pattern with golden or silver threads.
“Silk is very delicate and prone to damage from sunlight, harsh washing, insects and time,” Meechai points out. “It can’t last longer than a hundred years.”
Time might devour everything, but in Isaan, silk tests its patience.
Life histories, deeply held beliefs, and whole cultures are written in every thread.
