Surin Silks — Woven in Ban Takian

Women reeling golden silk cocoons over pans of hot water at hand-built reels — Reeling the cocoons, a few houses down the lane.

Silkworms feeding on a dense bed of mulberry leaves — The silkworms, on mulberry from the garden.

The Thread

Village-made, beginning to end.

The silkworms are raised on mulberry leaves a few houses over, and the cocoons are reeled by hand in the same lane — a gold thread, the color of the cocoon it came from. Nothing arrives on a truck.

The pattern goes into the thread before it reaches the loom: tied bundle by bundle, dyed, dried, retied, and dyed again. By the time weaving begins, the figure is already in the thread.

Dark red warp dressed on the loom, white fringe hanging, the yard bright beyond the shade — The loom under the house. Ban Takian.

The Weaver

Sixty years at the loom.

Wilai Kingchan learned from her mother, in the same village, at the same kind of loom. When the rice harvest was in and the fields went quiet, she stayed with the mulberry, the silkworms, and the weaving — and that loom fed a family and put a daughter through university, fifty centimeters at a time.

When a neighbor asks to learn, she teaches for nothing, so the weaving stays in the village.

Fifty centimeters on a good day.

P.K. · Ban Takian

The Pieces

Three, from two looms.

Hol silk in deep mulberry with fine bands of marigold, pink, and jade

Hol Length

Mudmee hol · 100 × 200 cm · the pattern Surin is known by

Five to six days on the loom USD 110

Black hol silk draped over a rail, the figure surfacing where the light rakes it

Hol Length, Black

Mudmee hol · 100 × 200 cm · the figure shows at an angle

Five to six days on the loom USD 110

Folded maroon and black sabai crossed by rows of small golden elephants

Elephant Sabai

Sabai · 60 × 200 cm · the elephant figure of Surin

Five to six days on the loom USD 80

Rows of mulberry bushes behind the house, palms and tin roofs beyond — The mulberry garden behind the house.

A length woven to your palette.

The hol figure on a ground you choose, or a sabai in a different field. Photos of the dyed thread are sent before the loom is dressed, and the price is agreed before the first pick. About a month, start to finish.

Write to the atelier