The landscape around Chonnabot is flat, dry and unspectacular. Deep into the dry season, the local cattle are as scrawny as the chickens, fields for crops are a muted brown and the soil crumbles in your hand like dry cake. In fact, the only thing green in any direction is a cluster of mulberry trees. Oddly enough, this setting is perfect starting point for that most Thai of industries, silk weaving. That some of the most vibrantly colored silk in the world could start life here is a mental leap of faith. Until, that is, you meet those involved at this, the grassroots level.
For the uninitiated, Chonnabot is more or less 60 kilometers southwest of Khon Kaen in Northeast Thailand. Due south of it is Hau Fai, a modest village where mulberry trees, on whose leaves silkworms feed, and a collection of silkworms farmers toil. The village has been raising silkworms and dyeing yarn for, well no one can actually remember. Hau Fai is a speck on the map, to say the least, including around 228 households, many of which have either weaving looms or bamboo racks of silkworms underneath their living quarters.
The silk industry is the one that is synonymous with Thailand. In fact, it's vastly older than the country. Northeast of Chonnabot on the Khorat Plateau is the village of Ban Chiang, now more of an archaeological site than anything else. Yet among the finds there have been unwoven and undyed silk thread remnants that date back thousands of years to the area's prehistoric civilization.
So silk and Siam have a long, detailed history but suffice it to say that by the 16th century, European traders had discovered the cloth as a valuable commercial item in this part of the world. By the 19th century, despite the role that fine silk played in Siamese high society, sericulture remained a cottage industry due to the flood of imported fabrics from China, Japan and as far afield as Persia.
Fast-forward to the present day and history is repeating itself in that, until the mid-20th century, local silk production was only prominent on a small scale. With the help of projects supported by Her Majesty the Queen the Thai silk industry has a promising future. Her Majesty's latest initiative is to certify Thai silk in order to authenticate and protect the reputation of the cloth from imitation fabrics. Thai silk is dividend into four grades based on specific silk type and production process, including weaving and dyeing.
Gold is a indication of premium silk made using traditional methods, silver is accredited to silk made from specific breeds of silkworm, blue is for Thai silk that uses chemical dyes, and green is a indicates silk blends with other fabrics. The reasoning behind such specific labeling is obvious: once again today, mass-produced silk from elsewhere in Asia is a threat to the traditional Thai silk industry.
