Laos Essential Artistry

Laos Tour Bibliograhy continued: Textile Books

There are three books that we recommend if someone wants to gain a better understanding about Lao textiles. Two are in print and our top two choices. They are: Weaving Tradition: Carol Cassidy and Woven Silks of Laos and Lao-Tai Textiles: The Textiles of Xam Nuea and Muang Phuan by Patricia Cheesman. The third book is the small classic by Mary Connors, Lao Textiles and Traditions, published in 1996 and has been out of print for many years.

The one book that we’re most excited about though is one that hasn’t been published yet. It’s in the process of being written by Elli Findly, the professor we’ve guided the last three years. It will be the kind of book that anyone traveling to Laos with an interest in textiles will want to have, providing the most complete discussion of all the different motifs being used in Lao textiles and the influence of religion (Buddhist and animist) and their use in rituals past and present. As she writes in her vita, the current proposed title is, Spirits in the Loom: Religion and Design in the Weaving of Northeastern Laos,” and of course its still in the process of being researched and written. Her direction in the book is reflected in a recent presentation she gave on “The Serpent and the Bird: Images of Transformation in Tai Textiles,” sponsored jointly by the Costume and Textile Society, the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum, and the Town and Country Club, Hartford, October 7, 2009. 

Our top two books are very different and are complementary, at least from our perspective. Carol’s book is actually a catalog produced in conjunction with the exhibition Weaving Tradition: Carol Cassidy and Woven Silks of Laos. The book was written by Dorothy Twining Globus and Mary F. Connors and the exhibition was curated by Dorothy Twining Globus.  As is written on the mocfa website, the book is “a comprehensive overview of the traditional and contemporary woven silk textiles of Laos and the techniques used to produce them plus a portrait of designer Carol Cassidy and her workshop, Lao Textiles. 160 pages, with 125 images and illustrations.” The book can be ordered through the San Francisco Muesum of Craft and Folk art here.

And we have to give ourselves a little plug as Peter is one of the many people listed in the acknowledgements as “having given generously of their talents, experience, and commitment in bringing this book and exhibition to fruition.” Two of our photos were used, there’s one of a Mien women embroidering on pg. 31 and the first photo in a sequence showing the tapestry weave technique of pg. 59.

The book is divided into three sections, The People of Laos and their Textiles, Making Textiles and  Carol Cassidy and the Lao Textiles Studio. The section we keep turning to is “Making Textiles.” Mary and Dorothy have done a marvelous job in describing and illustrating all the myriad facets of the weaving process. The writing is clear and the photographs leave no ambiguity, you really learn something here. Plus, almost worth the price of the book itself are the two black and white detailed illustrations of the loom, one facing the back of the weaver and one from overhead, looking directly down on the loom and weaver. We can’t begin to tell you the hundreds of times we’ve referred to these drawings in trying to better understand certain weaving details (at least from Peter’s perspective!).

The only nitpicking we have is with the binding of the catalog and our book is now in many “pieces.”

  

The second book we highly recommend is Lao-Tai Textiles: The Textiles of Xam Nuea and Muang Phuan by Patricia Cheesman. In writing this post we discovered there is a new PB edition, published on September 30, 2009 that is available on Amazon at a 32% discount for $40.85. Yes!

We are eternally grateful to Patricia because it is only through her book that we learned about Muang Vaen, one of our favorite weaving villages in all of Laos, and one that we visit on our tour. The book is clearly a work of love combined with some serious scholarship. We’ve met Patricia at a conference in Bangkok, visited her gallery in Chiang Mai and have a DVD she produced on Tai Daeng Shamanic Traditions in Sam Neua, and her strong connections with the tribal people of this region are clearly evident.

Patricia has published numerous books and articles on Thai and Lao textiles and is a recognized Lao-Thai textile expert and recently curated an exhibition (Summer 2009) at the East-West Center Gallery in Honolulu, Hawai‘I titled Cosmic Creatures: Textiles from Northeast Lao Communities, centering in the Sam Neua, Muang Vaen and Sam Tai area.

Back to the book. Whereas Carol’s catalog is more technical, Patricia’s book is rich in its telling of the story of weavers, villagers and shamans from the northeast region of Laos through their textiles.  The history and geography chapters are a little confusing, but they can be skipped and we’ve learned so much from her chapters on Lao women’s sinhs (Chapter 5: Textiles for women’s everyday wear and Chapter 6: Textiles for women’s ceremonial dress). The book is richly illustrated, with color photos on most pages and provides a remarkable insight into a region, Sam Neua/Sam Tai/Muang Vaen, that is often overlooked.

Recent Custom Order for a White Wedding Sinh

At Laos Essential Artistry we can’t begin to carry a selection of sinhs comparable to shops in Vientiane. We have selected certain styles we like and have listed them on our site, but while we have hundred of sinhs, the shops in Vientiane have thousands upon thousands of sinhs. Plus, some sinhs, especially those used for weddings can be relatively expensive. We’re not at that level yet…

So what we’ve done is write in our sinh section on our Yahoo store website that we will custom order sinhs for customers and we’ve completed a number of custom orders over the last year.

What we want to do in this post is share the process we went through for a recent custom order.

About a month ago we had a request from a customer asking if we had any white wedding sinhs in stock or could get one. Well, we definitely don’t have any in stock so Bai called her sister Bouasai who works in Vientiane and asked her if she could visit a couple of the shops we work with to see if they had any white wedding style sinhs. We’ve given her a digital camera so she can take photos and she located some white sinhs, took photos and emailed us the next day several photos of white sinhs, including the one below.

 Our customer liked the sinhs in this photo and actually preferred the whitish one on the left. But when we looked at the sinh carefully we could see there was a slight beige color to the white. The Lao actually prefer bright color sinhs, such as red or blue to wear for a wedding, and if they want something white, they prefer a more beige color.

In looking at both sinhs and talking with Bouasai, we determined the one on the right was closest to pure white. We told our customer and although the sinh was more expensive ($450) than she told us she initially wanted to spend, she told us that she wanted to order that one. One of the reasons these wedding style sinhs are so expensive is because of the embroidered patterns on the sinh. In this particular sinh the embroidery uses metallic threads and was quite complex and must have taken over a month to make.

When she told us about her decision then we asked her to send a check for $150 as a deposit. We can also take credit card numbers if a customer wants. Once we received the check we had Bouasai buy the sinh (she inspects them to make sure there are no issues such as discoloration, poor weaving/embroidery, etc.) and then she sent this one by express mail. It weighed just a little over 1 kilo and we paid $65 for shipping, which we had prearranged with her. If something is shipped by express it will arrive in a week. If we ship it by regular air-mail it may take up to a month and would have cost about $40.

Once we received the sinh, we inspected the sinh, took some photos and sent them to our customer. She loved the photos and sent another check to cover the balance due, $350. When we received the check we sent the sinh by priority mail and this last week she emailed us saying, “The sinh arrived last Monday! With all the holiday goings-on, I forgot to email you. Thank you so much; it is very beautiful and the embroidery is so impressive. My fiancé will be so surprised to see me walk down the aisle in such a gorgeous dress! Thanks again for all that you did to put it into my hands!”

The photos of the wedding sinh we sent her are below and we hope this post helps provide more transparency into what goes into a custom order.

We are currently working on an order for 18 sinhs for a customer in Minnesota who needs the sinhs for Lao girls who will be dancing in several performances this spring, beginning with Lao New Year in April. This custom order is a little bit more complex because the sinhs have to be custom woven to meet the specifications of our customer, rather than just purchased from a shop, and since she wants them by mid-March so they can be sewn and ready by Lao New Years, our weavers have only two months to complete the order. Bai’s brother will take photos and video of the sinhs, scarves and tdin sinhs being woven so we can post these later to help our customers understand the process involved in weaving sinhs.

 

Lao Sinhs Need to be custom measured and sewn

We often get asked if we have sinhs pre-sewn and ready to be worn. Unfortunately that's not the way it works. Yes, in the old days women would wrap the sinh (material) around their waist and then tuck it in or wrap a cloth belt around the sinh to hold it up. An example is in the photo above of Bai dressing in the traditional clothes (sinh and blouse) of a Tai Wat woman, a small tribal Tai group located in northern Huaphan Province (somewhat similar to the Tai Dam style).

But for many, many years sinhs have been custom sewn and it is crucial that the seamstress has to take three measurements of the woman who is going to wear the sinh so the sinh will fit correctly and look stylish, without wrinkles and mis-matched patterns. You can see in the photo we use on our Lao Sinh Section that the sinhs of the two young women on the right display perfectly, while the one on the left shows some wrinkles, which ideally, if sewn correctly, will not show.

In the three photos below you see Bai being measured for a sinh that the woman will sew for Bai. The three crucial measurements are the waist, hips and length, which vary of course with each individual.

Our hand-woven silk fabric is beautiful in its own right and the fabric doesn't just have to be used for sinhs. The average sinh fabric length is call in Lao "pheun neung" with one "pheun" being about 30 x 70 inches. But if you want the sinh fabric to be sewn into a sinh for you then you'll have to locate a seamstress that will sew the sinh for you

We had a manual for sewing sinhs translated into English this last June in Vientiane and will be referring to it in future posts.

 

 

Preparation of Ikat Silk for weaving into Sinh Fabric in Laos

Ikat Weaving Process in the Tai Daeng Village of Nongbouatong from Laos Essential Artistry on Vimeo.

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This is a SLOW video. Have you heard of the Slow Food Movement? I mean... that kind of slow. The kind of video that is just like being there. Sitting quietly, observing, absorbing the weaving life of these Tai Daeng women. But, they're not weaving here. They are involved in wrapping silk threads to create ikat patterns and also removing the plastic wrapped threads after the silk has been dyed. It's a slow, pain-staking process, but like much of the work in Laos, it's buffered by the chance for conversation. People don't realize how much work goes into the creation of ikat textiles, whether they be scarves or sinhs. There's the initial process of tie-dying the silk and then the actual weaving. This video lets you feel like you're there, sitting with the women. We have some beautiful ikat textiles that are a tremendous bargain considering the artistry and time it takes both to create the ikat and weave the textiles. Check out our Ikat Sinhs and our exclusive Silk Ikat Display Textiles