Prang is on a mission to “keep craft alive using my material”.  She calls herself a practitioner, as it with doing she can refine, understand, and teach techniques that have almost dyed out. However, Prang, formally known as Khun Aloonprapan Rojanachotikul, is much more than that. She is dyer, a weaver, an artist and an educator, and we were lucky enough to spend a couple hours with her learning the “Jandok” wrapping technique of manuscript covers. Why would you want to learn to wrap a manuscript? As Prang is happy to explain it is all about the technique and you can do what you will with it. And it is a beautiful technique, that can be constrained, as weaving is, or more free flow, and has been over centuries, preserving manuscripts in Thailand.

Traditionally covers for manuscripts are offered to the monk for an auspicious event or the beginning or end of Buddhist lent to replace or repair damaged covers. They reflect faith and identity with the women; weaving, braiding, or wrapping cotton with bamboo in patterns from their faith and culture.

The manuscripts, these bamboo and cotton cloths cover, are palm leaf manuscripts. This is an ancient practice. Monks would etch with a sharp pen-like instrument the Pali script into the palm leaf and then brush ink over the top, wiping away excess to then see the script. With the printing press, manuscripts become more readily available and easily distributed and this art is no longer part of temple life, however the manuscripts exist. And they need to be protected from mice and termites. Prang would visit temples and see they were throwing out damaged covers, collectors too, and find the treasures of patterns and techniques she could learn. And then her professor said she must learn from one of the last makers using the braiding technique, an elderly woman in Mae Chan.  As she explained it is more like watching than learning but that she did, and now she keeps the craft alive educating students, crafts people alike, in these beautiful techniques.

There are 3 techniques in the manuscript covers:

Weaving – On the loom where bamboo strips are inserted as per a weft thread. Patterns are created in sections, and in some cultures, these may be spiritual animals.

Braiding – This is done in 3 sections and is very time consuming, the bamboo strips are within the braiding. No one does this anymore.

Wrapping – This is the technique we learnt today, a sort of cotton crochet over the bamboo strips.

The techniques and patterns Prang works from are from northern Thailand, around her hometown of Chiang Mai, made by women from the Tai Yai, Tai Kun, Tai Leu and Tai Yuan. In central Thailand manuscripts have been found to have different fabrics woven in, chintzes and royal brocades with gold thread. The palm leaf manuscript size is approximately 60-70cm wide and 30-40cm high. Fabric pieces may be attached around the covers to fold over first then cover the manuscript within. And sometimes the maker will line the cover with cloth to further protect the manuscript from bamboo which may be exposed on the underside. There have been instances where women’s handwoven skirts were found to be covers, where the intention may be to give something of high value, an unworn skirt of expert weaving, where in some cultures this would be taboo.

So, with Prang’s enthusiastic energy we all embarked on the lesson of wrapping, jondok. Her beautiful samples show old patterns in new light with vibrant threads, some cotton, some synthetic, even glittering. She has a passion for colour, recreating the past in her continual practice, hence her self-title of practitioner. Students have created book covers and pot plant holders, as she said, it is all about the technique, and she lives by the motto:

Study the past

Learn the present

Create the future.

My work in progress.

Thank you to the Thai Textile Society, Bangkok, for this workshop and all the interesting and engaging interactions you make possible with so many diverse enthusiasts withing your membership, and connections to institutions within Thailand.