I know this fellow

Across a busy street, and down a little alley (aklang with urgent jabbering of hammers), another temple is being aluminum-clad. In the ordination hall, amidst a jumble of half-finished repousse panels, brick, mortar, cement and various vicious-looking builders' tools; and partly obscured by a door (like a naughty student punished to stand in a corner), there stands this head, about four feet high chin to top-of-headdress. It will be a giant statue of a supernatural being. Just what being, I do not know: not a Buddha (wrong sort of face), not an apsara (the headdress is too regal), not a Hindu god (the face is too sweet and too... Thai, while Hindu gods are odd-looking -- presumably Indian, or the best a Thai artist who'd never seen an Indian can imagine one).

This face is so Thai in fact that at first glance I thought it was a portrait of a friend.

This work is quite unique: I have seen few temple statues of this beauty anywhere in Thailand, none at all made within living memory. Further, temple images usually strive for the stiff monumental look -- it is meant to be otherworldly: the creatures which populate Thai Buddhist heaven are not like us (or else we would not need to strive to change ourselves). The only piece which approaches the lively realism of this head that I can think of is the 7th century black soapstone male torso of a Hindu god, discovered in the 19th century in Nakhon Si Thammarat, in the Kra Peninsula, and now housed in the Bangkok National Museum. (It is easily the most beautiful piece there). So, this is a very special work.

I want to know where this head is going. That will be the temple to worship at, obviously.

Temple Silver

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Both sides of Wualai Road -- the so called "Silver Street" -- are little alleys packed with silver manufactories. The sound of hammering comes here from every house. Men sit packed tightly, shoulder to shoulder, at small working benches, hammering, soldering, rolling and polishing. The silversmiths are neither a guild nor a caste, but are united by the traditional feudal master-servant relationship -- smiths receive room and board plus a small stipend -- and, for those established in business, intermarriage. They are united enough to undertake joint projects such as lobbying for government subsidies and temple construction. This temple is covered head to toe (except for its roof tile), both inside and outside, with hand wrought aluminum.


The technique known in Thailand as "Lanna Silver" is really nothing but good old repoussé. It works even better with aluminum which is similar in color, far cheaper, softer, and does not need to be heated during hammering (unheated silver often cracks when hammered). Its only downside is that it does not tarnish with age, which is what some of the repousse designs call for, but this effect can be achieved by staining.

Below is a wall panel from the temple, showing half-life-size Rama leading the monkey army against Lanka. The panel is probably 2 meters high by 1.5 meters long.


Here is a three-panel window blind with stories from the Jataka.



Here is a Dutch silversmith (she works in one of the silver factories here) with the temple minder and a bit of outside wall decoration. The peacock is a mystical symbol in many religions. In Christianity he represents the glory of life after death, in Buddhism the sudden unfolding of the mind at the moment of enlightenment.


Here are two life-size heavenly guardians on the outside wall, each side of the window. They are wearing Burmese court dress (as only befits a city with such strong Shan influence).



And here is the entrance to the temple:


Take a look at the doors again: Indra on Erawan on the left, carrying Brahma on his shoulders.


And Vishnu riding Garuda on the right:


And a Ramayana scene in the tympanum:


In Khmer architecture (and all things Khmer are still the cultural model for Thailand), the tympanum is the triangular stone above the door opening, within the arch created by the two entwined nagas (heavenly snakes). In the one below there is a scene from the Ramakhien (the Thai Ramayana): Sita has been kidnapped; Hanuman arrives to tell Rama and Lakshmana of her whereabouts.


And in this, another scene from the Ramakhien, Rama and Sita, reunited, have taken refuge in Hanuman's mouth.


And here is a wall decoration: a man-sized Ganesha, Remover of Obstacles, with his rat vehicle and a bowl of gulab jamun (his favorite sweet).


And here is Indra again, in greater detail:


Uniquely, and perhaps a sign of things to come, this one has been signed. (Enlarge yourself and look on bottom right). Walking back along the main street I saw a similar panel being completed. "How many men did it take to make it?" I asked. "One", was the sly answer. "And how long did it take you?" "A year."

Typically of gender-confusing Thailand, about a fourth of the silversmiths are women.

And here is the tree of life again (a photo from the interior).

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PS A friend asks how it is done: One places the sheet of metal (silver/aluminum) on a bed of warm tar, which then sets; and glues to it the desired picture in reverse. One then proceeds to hammer out the outline roughly by pounding with a hammer at the paper picture (and the underlying metal). One then warms the tar, detaches the sheet of aluminum, turns it over, places it on a bed of warm tar again, and, as soon as the tar has set, hammers out the details from the front.

Traditional mural painting is alive in Thailand

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I think it was in 2003 that, by complete accident, I stumbled upon this book. While perusing it, I was suddenly seized by a powerful desire to go and see all the mural paintings reproduced in it. The next morning I rented a car and set out on the journey. It lasted four weeks, covered perhaps 4,000 kilometers, visited seventeen different establishments, and culminated in a ramshackle temple in Thonburi, Bangkok, where a small crowning epiphany descended upon me like a fine spring shower.

Everywhere I went I was struck by how much the murals had deteriorated in the fifteen years since the book's publication. They all had, but those in Thonburi especially so. As I looked at them with love and the sweet heart-breaking sadness of regret -- and monks around me chanted their sutra -- I experienced one of those sudden revelations of Dharma: of course the monks do nothing to preserve the murals: that is the very essence of Buddhism, is it not, to know that everything is an illusion, everything passes, and that one must not try to hold onto illusory ephemera. It is well to admire a flower, but it is foolish to regret its wilting.

But, luckily (for us aesthetes), there is a cognitive dissonance at the heart of Thai Buddhism: while the monks know that all art is impermanent, all ritual is waste of time, and all temple building a pain-begging exercise in vanity; they do not teach these facts strenuously. (That, too, is the essence of Buddhism, is it not: to want to teach would mean to strive. This is why Thai monks are generally Savakas (Śrāvaka), that is, they are assumed to receive instructions directly from Lord Buddha himself: not even their teachers bother to teach them).

Thus untaught, ordinary Thai lay believers continue to strive; and, in particular, to strive to build and decorate temples. All of Thailand is abuzz with the noise of construction machinery. A full tithe, in my estimation -- one in ten sites -- is a temple going up.

One is going up nearby. I have been visiting it over the last four years to watch the progress of the work. Currently a Burmese style chambered stupa is being decorated. It has two halls, one lower and one upper. It is dark in the upper hall, and photos mostly do not come out as a result, but here are a few taken recently to give you a flavor of what is going on.

The temple is associated with the royal family and is therefore both richer and more gorgeous than most. Most temples in Thailand are pretty kitchy; but this one, well, this one shows that mural art is not dead in Thailand. Old murals rot, fade and fall away, but what is the big deal with that when new beautiful murals are painted afresh every year?

Here is a view of a section of the upper room.


The hall has entrances in the northern and southern walls; while the eastern and western walls are decorated with full-wall murals. (The view above is of the south-eastern corner of the room: a full painted wall is on the left and the southern entrance just to the right).

The eastern wall, which hosts the main image (its eyes have not yet been "opened" so it is OK to photograph it in any old way), features a view of the Buddhist cosmos: the stupas, floating in the clouds of fragrant ether, each represent a different universe, of which one is ours (with all its eight billion light years and all); and in the center of this multiverse grows the great tree of life. It is, of course, golden.








The western wall represents another heavenly scene: Hindu divinities (including Erawan (in Thai, Airavata in Sanskrit, the thousand-headed white elephant who is the vehicle of Indra, the old god of war) disporting themselves in the flying palaces of the Western Paradise. (Note that the picture is not complete yet and there are still blank spaces).






And here are a few details from the sides. These two are sections of the eastern wall -- they are found under the small side windows located to the right and left of the main mural.



And this is a panel next to the northern door.


The next (and last) photo is different. This one is executed in gold dusted-paint and gold-leaf on black lacquer base. It is a leaf of a double-door leading into the hall. (As it is the external surface of the door, it is covered with sturdy plastic to protect it against gold thieves). Around new year's, I watched the painters -- it was a husband and wife team -- both of them in their fifties, fat, squat, indifferent looking, poorly dressed; for their looks you could have thought they operated a fermented-pork-sausage and booze stand in the village night market-- he painted the images freehand in black; she colored them in gold. The dissonance between their less than ordinary looks -- and unassuming demeanor -- and the incredible work they turned out was really very thought provoking. What is it like to make stuff like this all day? What is it like to then return home to the hovel one lives in and look at oneself the mirror?

Then there the old saw, too: do not judge a book by its cover, though obviously, in this case, you would not go wrong judging the hall by its entrance.

This guy named Fred

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Not all contemporary art is -- well, Contemporary; some of it is even pretty, like this work of Fred Rich, here. Nor is all jewelry made today in the west ugly, machine-bent platinum shlock relying on brand name for generating sales. My only gripe about dear Fred is -- he's damned pricey.