Crafts

Utilitarian items created for domestic use, such as clothing, baskets, fish traps, and water jars, were produced from locally available materials and their efficient and practical form evolved to suit the needs of everyday people. Every village, and in some cases every household, produced items superbly adapted for the regions where they were used.

Devotional items, such as the woodcarvings and bronzes which ornament the wats, or temples, which are central to every community in Thailand, were sometimes commissioned by local nobility but often were simply a way of showing respect. The names of the artisans and craftsmen who developed the distinctive styles of woodcarving are largely forgotten. In part, this is because they were motivated, not by a desire for glory and personal fame, but by a desire to make merit by contributing their skills to the veneration of the Buddha.

Items crafted for royalty, on the other hand, were intended to demonstrate status. Silks, silver, gemstones, lacquerware, and other handcrafted objects denoted the rank of the person who wore or possessed them. Royal households included artisans working in silver, mother-of-pearl, wood, bronze and ceramics who produced objects for their royal patrons. Some items, such as the finest silks or certain combinations of gemstones, were restricted to royalty of the very highest station.

Some crafts, such as pottery, can be traced back to prehistory, before the people now known as the Thai migrated into present day Thailand. Excavations in Ban Chiang, in Northeast Thailand, have revealed pottery 3,000 to 4,000 years old, and also threads of silk, which suggest, but do not prove, that sericulture may have been practiced in the area, more than a thousand years before the Thai began their migration from southern China. The Northeast is now home to a large part of Thailand's silk weaving industry.

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