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Symbolism

Shortly before the onset of the monsoon each year, municipal workmen fasten a continuous length of bleached cotton threads some six metres (twenty feet) up in the air inside the moat right round the perimeter of the old city. This thin string passes over the tops of each of the five gates and along the tops of the four corner bastions. From it, in the centre of each gateway, they hang a traditional yantra (sacred, magical device, in this case made from intertwined bamboo strips). Enclosed, and ritually protected, the old walled city's precincts are thereby sanctified for the enactment of an annual rite known as sueb chada muang 'extending the city's life'.

During this, chapters of eleven monks chant blessings at each of the four corners and five portals, while a further nine do the same at the city centre in the square in front of the Old City Hall (now the Arts and Cultural Centre), site of the Three Kings' Monument. This gives a total of a highly auspicious number, 108 monks in all.
Sacred enclosures demarcated with threads of bleached cotton tied to poles, areas only ritual participants enter, are fairly widely used in Thailand. For example, there is an annual sacrifice of a young water buffalo bull in an ancient ceremony to invoke the arrival of the monsoon rains. This is associated with spirit possessions of mediums and is celebrated at the village of Mae Hia, just beyond the airport at the foot of Doi Kham, The Golden Mountain. The Buddhist temple on its summit is the centre for all kinds of activities connected with local legends concerning the founding of neighbouring Lamphun, a city hundreds of years older than others in the region, as well as Chiang Mai itself.

There are also curing or blessing rituals, in which a spirit medium, or a respected village elder, ties threads of bleached cotton around the wrist, or both wrists, of a petitioner in order to call back or restrain straying spirits that animate vital human energies. In Hmong villages in the hills, they use hemp threads in much the same way.
Elongated woven banners dangling from bamboo poles are carried in ritual processions and hung inside and outside temple compounds during temple fairs.

Many peoples in the region, both lowlanders and highlanders, also use cotton or hemp to make 'thread squares', another form of yantra, in which many cotton threads of contrasting colours are tied to light wooden struts to form basic geometrical shapes; squares, triangles, or hexagons. These are 'apotropaic devices', anthropological jargon deriving from the Greek root apotroupos, 'to turn away'. The ancient belief is that wherever you hang up such yantra, they will protect an area, or a building, against the intrusion of malign spirits.

An old metaphor hints at the underlying historical depths of such widespread beliefs: "His life was hanging by a thread."

Symbolically, spinning and weaving have been used cross culturally in many vivid images to depict the creation of the world and to interpret the inexplicable vagaries of happenchance that appear to dictate our fates.

In Scandinavia the Norns, and in Greece the Moirai, are three grim-faced crones, embodiments of destiny, who between them spin, measure, and snip our lifelines. In a comparable manner, the great Indian epic the Mahabharata, enormously influential throughout the Indian cultural sphere of Asia, portrays Kali (personifying both Time and Destiny) as the cosmic weaver. He conceives the patterns of both individual lives and the whole of creation with his intertwining black threads of sorrow, suffering, decay, and dissolution and his white ones of light, joy, growth, health, and fertility.

Then again, in one of the Rigvedas (Indian scriptures), the creation of the world is described as the stretching of the warp and the drawing of the woof, and the spreading of the fabric of creation upon the dome of the sky.

In the ancient worldview, heaven and earth were mirror images of each other: "As above, so below," in the mystic's hallowed formula. Every human activity and artefact, even the very dimensions of space and extensions of time were thus sanctified. Contrariwise, all the hosts of immortal beings in heaven (or the heavens) were understood to think and feel very much like mortals.

Savants elaborated correspondences. The world contained seven directions; right and left, in front and behind, above and below, and the point at the centre of their axes that symbolises 'inwards'. It also stands for The One; the font from which all creation flows. There are also seven 'gates' in the human head; eyes, ears, nostrils, mouth.

Up in the sky, there are seven colours in the arch of the rainbow. Here in Thailand, these have traditionally been associated with the seven 'wanderers', the sky deities Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn. Thus each day of the week has its colour. There are seven stars in the constellations of the Great Bear, the Little Bear, and the Pleiades (all prominent in Indian mythology).

Such interpretations were an attempt at analysis; part of a process of contriving from the chaotic flux of life a pattern of order that could be grasped and in doing so, determined. During the evolution of human societies, every technical step forward, in the production of textiles as well as in other fields, has revealed fresh possibilities for fertile minds to play with, generating new metaphors to describe relationships and help explain the mysteries of existence. In fact, this is an on-going phenomenon in our own age.

Over time, textiles became imbued with symbolic import. What's more, as we can still see with the hill tribes here in the North, costumes (along with jewellery) can also become highly stylised, serving both to foster a sense of belonging to a group and to define status within it. Unmarried girls wear one kind of clothing, married women another, for instance.

Colour has also been used to assert status. Purple, the most expensive dye was reserved for imperial robes in Rome, with strips of it along the hem of their togas for senators. Yellow robes were similarly reserved for the Emperor in China. Patterns woven or dyed into cloth could carry meanings, too, often of magico-religious significance. They could also proclaim hierarchical messages. In the batik-producing centre of Jojakarta in Indonesia, for example, royalty could only wear certain designs.

In general, people from industrial societies no longer perceive themselves as living within a sanctified world order. For most of us, science has, in effect, deconsecrated our vision of the universe. But many Thai, especially the villagers, still inhabit a sacred cosmos in which, for instance, cardinal directions, the relative elevations of people when seated, colours and patterns, all fit into a traditional paradigm, or mental model, of the universe.

When a foreign tourist buys an attractive length of cotton or silk at the market, which he then has made up into a sports shirt, it makes no difference to him, even if you point it out, that women traditionally wear this particular pattern as a sarong. However, the Thais who see him walking around in the streets in it, may react quite strongly. Some might snigger about the incongruity, amused by the fellow's ignorance. Others, though, are subtly disturbed, since it tilts their world picture slightly askew. A woman wears a sarong to cover the lower half of her body. Now, not only is this man wearing a woman's material but he is wearing it over the upper part of his torso. Doesn't he know what all Thai know? Menstrual blood is a magical substance potent enough to overwhelm all a man's spiritual prowess that he has striven to attain by study and practice. By behaving in this totally inappropriate way, he is threatening the equilibrium of the world order, and thereby all who encounter him. This is just one instance of the kind of train of associated ideas that often runs through Thai minds when confronted by the spectacle of a foreigner behaving, from their viewpoint, in an utterly bizarre way.

Spinning, dyeing, weaving, and even costumes, then, are all charged with symbolism in the traditional worldview. In China, the discovery of sericulture (silkworm rearing and the production of silk yarn) is attributed to the wife of the mythical Yellow Emperor, a culture hero who gave all the arts and crafts to humankind. In fact, the art of weaving in hemp, silk and cotton goes back close on 5,000 years, and according to archaeologists, probably derives from the earlier technologies of net making and basketry. Doubtless, the talented folk of remote antiquity, who first contrived the sophisticated techniques of weaving, felt the results they achieved were divine gifts. Think of the ingenuity required to derive hard-wearing hemp cords, ropes, and cloth from the hollow stalks of plants; light, breathing cotton fabric from the fluffy interior of seed pods; and lustrous silk stuff from the thread with which a caterpillar spins its chrysalis.

As with later artists, writers, dancers and musicians, the pre-historic innovators must have felt quite literally inspired when they created something new.

Japanese Zen artists have a succinct saying with an appeal to anyone who has ever been caught up in the creative drive in any medium. It encapsulates the marvel felt after the event: "You don't paint it. It paints you."

So, our gifted forebears clearly thought. Where else could the impulses and ideas that seemed to flow through them into such novel actions and resulting products have come from but the lofty heights of heaven? Since they lacked writing to record their beliefs, their myths have vanished, or perhaps merged with those of peoples from later eras but faith in the potent magic inherent in the metaphysical binding and loosening powers of threads still lives on. They are implicit in the sort of ritual activities we noted at the outset.

Hemp

Hemp, Cannabis sativa, comes from central Asia and its cultivation in China is recorded from 4,800 years ago. 2,000 years ago, it was being grown throughout the Northern Mediterranean regions and its cultivation spread to the rest of Europe during the Middle Ages. It was planted in Chile during the Sixteenth Century and in North America in the following Century. Hemp is nowadays, grown in most countries, since different parts of the plant can be processed in various ways for many useful ends. The oil from hempseeds, for instance, is used in making paints, varnishes, soaps, and edible oil. However, the main (legal) commercial use of this seed is for caged-bird food.

The fibrous line from the stalk belongs to the bast family: their yarns are made from bark or stalks. Linen is the other best-known fabric of the group. Hemp cordage yarn, twine, string, rope, and cable has been a commercial product for thousands of years, so much so that cords made from other kinds of fibre have often been loosely called by the same name. Only cords made from Cannabis sativa are true hemp; until the advent of nylon it made the strongest and most durable of ropes. As a fabric, it has also been widely used for canvas and sacking.

In the Sixteenth Century, Françoise Rabelais wrote a sprawling satirical compendium of the knowledge of the day in the guise of an extended legendary tale called 'Gargantua and Pantagruel.' This classic of early French literature contains a lengthy eulogy, almost a hymn of praise, in celebration of the virtues of hemp. It lists its multiple uses at the time, including a passage on the hangman's esteem for its much-prized quality as the chosen material for the all-important tool of his trade.

To obtain the fibre lines, the seeds are annually planted close together, so ensuring that they grow two to three metres tall almost without branching except at the tip. The plants grow best in sandy loam with good drainage, and a steady average monthly rainfall of at least 65 mm (2.5 inches). Once pulled from the earth or cut off close to the ground, the stalks are tied in bundles, submerged in water, weighted down, and left for several days to rest. This process speeds up the decomposition of the woody component of the stalk. Later they are spread out to dry, then crushed, and finally shaken to release the lines, generally around two metres long, from the other debris. These fibres are then twisted together as they are worked into cords or fabric yarns. The fabric can be yellowish, greenish, or a dark brown or grey. It is hard to bleach to a lighter colour so it is rarely dyed, except in Italy where, by a special process, they achieve a whitish fabric with an attractive lustre comparable to linen.

Hemp has long been grown by some of the hill tribes for their own use. They weave cloth to make such things as shoulder bags or sacks, or use it as cord for fishing gear such as macramé, keep nets and tote bags. Over the past few decades, though, it has become a fashionable fabric for clothes and is sold in many clothes shops in the Night Bazaar and along Tha Phae Road, among many other locations around town. Trousers, shirts, jackets, bags, caps and hats, and so forth, as well as a variety of items such as bags and cushions are all widely on offer.

Most of the hemp cloth on sale in Chiang Mai is hand-woven in Laos. Since it is a landlocked, mountainous country with a low population density, way out of the international economic mainstream, many of the villages remain close to the traditional subsistence economy. Thus labour costs are much lower than in Thailand. For different reasons, the same applies to Burma. So many of the cloth goods on sale in Chiang Mai's markets, while they are designed here, are actually woven and sewn across the borders.

Cotton

The Europeans of the Middle Ages first heard about this tropical fibre from rumours carried along extended trade routes. These came by roundabout ways and were splendidly garbled in translation. The concept of the origin of cotton received, and even subsequently illustrated in a book, was that it came from a miraculous tree which bore miniature sheep as its fruit!

The production and processing of this fibre played a prominent role in both American and European history during the Nineteenth Century. The Manchester cotton mills were the first highly mechanized factories in the world, the engine pulling the train of the Industrial Revolution, as it were. At the same time, the movement to abolish slavery was gaining ground. This increased the friction between the Northern and Southern states in the US, since the British factories bought their bales of raw cotton from the cotton plantations in the south, which were totally dependent on slave labour. The fierce disputes partly fuelled by these harsh economic facts, along with the spreading fervour aroused by the anti-slavery activists, finally erupted in the calamitous Civil War. Its effects are still clearly evident in American politics today.

Cotton, derived from many varieties of the genus Gossypium, is also of vegetal origin, and is native to most subtropical countries. The shrub can grow up to 6 metres (20 feet) in height, but under cultivation ranges from 1 to 2 metres (4 to 6 feet). Its flowers are a creamy white, and the seedpods small and green. This is the cotton boll. The seed fibres grow inwards from its shell. When it ripens and bursts, a white or slightly yellowy mass springs out.

The fibrous mass emitted by the bursting boll is about 90% cellulose, along with a little water and a few natural impurities. The fibres are short, from .75 to 1.5 inches (2 to 4 centimetres), and, as the first step in processing, have to be separated from the seeds (ginning). Then comes carding, cleaning and separating the matted fibres into a loosely assembled rope, followed by drawing; elongating and tightening the rope by pulling it out from both ends. The stuff for higher quality fabrics is next combed so as to further align the fibres and remove the shorter ones. The final step is spinning, twisting fibres together to make yarns that, as the finished product, are wound onto spools.

Cotton is relatively inexpensive since it is one of the world's major agricultural crops. It can be worked to produce a variety of materials ranging from such delicate fabrics as voile or lace to heavy-duty sailcloth, as well as thick velveteen suitable for garments, interior décor and upholstery, or even industrial applications. It can also be napped, that is 'processed' to give a downy surface for increased warmth with garments.

The small town of Pa Sang, 11 kilometres south of Lamphun, has been famous as Thailand's hand-woven cotton production centre for at least fifty or sixty years. There are showrooms along the main road, with attached workshops where you can see the weavers at work on handlooms. The range of goods here includes bedding, soft furnishings, clothes, and fashion accessories. The town's other claim to fame is that the local girls, in Thai belief, are the most beautiful in the country.

There is another community of cotton weavers in Mae Chaem, east of Chomthong. Until about two decades ago, they were a small, isolated, conservative community. They therefore held on to many of their old beliefs and customs while the rest of the country was swept up in the whirlwinds of change. One of their specialities is weaving stylised animals such as horses, elephants, geese, and black swans into sin tin jok. These are elaborately decorated strips about six inches wide that are sewn as hems onto the elegant pasin (sarong) worn on festive occasions. They are often on display when young women in traditional costumes join one of Chiang Mai's famous parades.

Back in the Nineteenth Century, rural Thailand still had a subsistence economy with farmers growing all their own food and making pretty well everything they used. They sold fruit and vegetables in town at local markets to get the cash for things like salt and paraffin (kerosene). Mothers taught their daughters how to spin and weave cotton for everyday clothes, and sometimes silk sarongs for public festivities and attendance at temple ceremonies. They worked at their looms in the cool space beneath the wooden house (built by their men folk) that was raised on stilts. This is a rare sight nowadays, except in a few special districts associated with urban dealers like the two mentioned above, or in remote areas where elderly women still weave phakhama (a man's loincloth) and pasin (a woman's sarong). But even there, they do not spin home grown cotton any more but weave with imported synthetic yarns, instead. The phakhama and pasin they make these days, as work clothes, are thus far more hardwearing and durable than the old cotton ones.

Silk

Unlike hemp and cotton, silk is an animal fibre, a protein like our own hair. Throughout history, it has been one of China's most famous exports. Carried by camel caravan along the Silk Roads clear across Asia, by the time it reached Athens and Rome, it was quite literally worth its weight in gold. Down through the ages, the Chinese state stressed the importance of sericulture by stipulating that all farmers' taxes should be paid in bolts of silk, and by regulating its distribution as an imperial monopoly. It was still one of the major lures that drew the late Fifteenth Century European navigators in their early attempts to outflank and break, the Islamic traders' monopoly of the supplies, not only of silk but also of tea, china, and all the spices of the Indies.

Here in Thailand, archaeologists have found impressions of silk fabrics in Ban Chiang graves in Isan, so the history of weaving in silk goes back here in the Southeast Asian Peninsula almost as far as it does in China itself.

Several related types of moth extrude a kind of thread, when their caterpillars spin cocoons, which can be used to make a sort of silk. Nearly five thousand years back, though, the Han Chinese domesticated a moth, Bombyx mori, that was outstanding in this respect. Now extinct in the wild, it is still widely bred around the globe, not least here in Thailand.

The caterpillars are fed on the leaves of the white mulberry tree. Once they spin their cocoons, the majority are harvested, (though naturally some are spared as breeding stock). They are then boiled in water, to soften them and to dissolve the glue caterpillars secrete along with their thread. The worker then unpicks one end of the boiled cocoon and unravels the thread as a single unbroken strand. This thread can be 800 metres or more in length and, amazingly, has a higher tensile strength than a steel filament of the same calibre. These strands are then spun together to make the skeins involved in weaving. Sometimes they are plaited into two or three ply cords, as in rope making, to give a thicker, heavier fabric. The skeins are bleached before dyeing. In Ikat weaving, a complex technique for which the Isan weavers are renowned as are others in Indonesia and Southeast Asia, the skeins are tie-dyed before weaving, so that a unique pattern emerges by itself on the loom, without the need to keep changing the colour of the threads.

Sericulture is an Isan (North-Eastern Thailand) speciality, where they also do a lot of silk weaving. The Northern silk hand weaving factories out on the Sankampaeng Road get their supplies of yarn from there and elsewhere in Asia. Most of the big showrooms have demonstrations of silk spinning and weaving on traditional handlooms. Like local producers in many fields, many producers bring out two separate lines, because of continuing problems with patent protection in Thailand. One range of designs is for the local market, where smaller manufacturers soon copy them. Because of this, the firm must change them frequently. The export designs have a longer life, since they are better protected under patent laws elsewhere. You will only get to see them here if you are a foreign wholesale buyer, or a close friend of the firm's designer.

A Purchasing Paradise

When it comes to fabrics and fashion, there is a striking range of choices available locally. Some dealers specialise in traditional textiles from the multiple ethnic groups of the region. They have stocks of historical examples of museum quality woven pieces, along with reproductions, and contemporary interpretations of these designed with the ever-changing international fashion scene in mind. They have an acute awareness of the preferences of customers in different markets. The American, European, and Japanese buying publics, for instance, often differ considerably in their seasonal preferences.

Across the spectrum are the tailors and dressmakers, many of whom make suits and clothes within twenty-four hours if you are pressed for time. They offer excellent value. Generally they are of Chinese or South Asian descent. Their two communities have been the major players in the import of fabrics since the heyday of the colonial era in the Nineteenth Century. The cloth markets of Bangkok and Chiang Mai are their domain. They are similarly prominent in the fabrics for upholstery and interior décor field. They generally offer a wide variety of materials not only of such classics as silk, cotton, linen, wool, and cashmere of various kinds but also a choice of synthetic fabrics (or mixes) that, depending on purpose, can often be the more appropriate choice.

Anyone with a passion for fabrics will find a plethora of choices on offer in the local shops and markets at a wide range of prices. Whatever your fancy, be it plain, printed, painted, lined, checked, speckled, mottled, floral, focused, elaborated, muted, vivid, traditional, contemporary; batik, embroidery, lace, quilted, appliqué, macramé; soft, sensual, smooth, embossed, fine, diaphanous, thick, heavy; hard-wearing, fashionable, utilitarian; your only real problem will be in making up your mind which to choose.

It is always best to buy silk from a reputable dealer, but should you be tempted by an especially beautiful design, say, in a market, there is a test you can do to check whether the material is real or artificial silk. Ask the vendor to give you a few threads from the end of the bolt and light them over a clean ashtray. Silk, as an animal protein, will burn to fine ashes with a smell like burning hair, while artificial silk will ooze and bubble and smell of what it is: melting plastic.