泰国风-THAIWIND

　　　At a sparkling gala dinner hosted recently in New York City, Her Majesty Queen Sirikit was honoured with the 2004 Aid to Artisans Award for the Preservation of Crafts.
　　　The glitter of New York may be far removed from the simple village life of rural Thailand, but as this award testifies, Her Majesty has successfully forged links between the two. In New York, as well as in Paris and other cultural capitals of the West, Queen Sirikit has regularly presented in numerous royal receptions and exhibitions dazzling arrays of silks, embroidery, gold and silverware, ceramics, woodcarving and other traditional handicrafts that exemplify Thailand’s cultural heritage and the creativity of the Kingdom’s largely rural artisans.
　　　The significance of such presentations, however, lies only in part in showcasing Thailand’s unique artistic legacy. As important as the handicrafts themselves is what they represent, all having been produced by poor farmers trained through Her Majesty’s SUPPORT programme, which has the dual aim of preserving traditional arts and crafts and alleviating rural poverty.
　　　The story of Her Majesty’s championship of the rural poor and her patronage and promotion of traditional handicrafts dates back virtually to the beginning of the reign, and underscores the essential concept of monarchy as interpreted and practiced by His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej and Queen Sirikit.

　　　In 1955, just a few years after ascending the throne, His Majesty the King, accompanied by the Queen, made a 22-day tour of Northeast Thailand, the most neglected and poorest area of the country. The people, most of whom had never seen a Thai monarch in person before, flocked to pay homage to Their Majesties.
　　　This pioneering tour was to set the pattern for the reign and every year the King spends seven to eight months outside of Bangkok touring all parts of the country. These provincial tours, usually made in the company of the Queen, are far more than mere exercises in public relations and serve very practical ends. A man of considerable personal accomplishment, King Bhumlbol takes a direct hand in initiating and promoting development projects, especially those concerned with agriculture, designed to eradicate poverty and boost national growth.
　In this work His Majesty is admirably supported by Queen Sirikit who, in a 1979 interview, remarked: “If you cannot abolish poverty, you cannot bring peace to your country, or help your government.”

　　
　　　With a great personal interest in science and technology, King Bhumibol concentrates on major development projects as wide ranging as irrigation and crop substitution programmes. As the perfect complement to such endeavours, Her Majesty has focused attention on the family and, in particular, the role of rural women.
Thai women have traditionally been adept at all manner of handicrafts, weaving the family cloth being just the most obvious example. The family unit and craft production have thus historically gone largely hand in hand, and it has been Queen Sirikit’s genius to see that what has served the past can also serve the present.
While Her Majesty extends assistance in many ways and through diverse development schemes, it is her promotion of traditional arts and crafts that best epitomizes her endeavours. Through encouraging and providing the means for the rural poor to revive old handicrafts, the Queen shows a way for families to secure a source of valuable supplementary income while, at the same time, a fresh lease of life is given to time-honoured crafts that may otherwise die out.
　　　The origins of Queen Sirikit’s specific involvement with indigenous handicrafts dates from the early 1970s,when a disastrous flood in Thailand’s northeast region destroyed crops and caused widespread misery and deprivation. Their Majesty visited the stricken area and provided food and other necessities for the immediate relief of the flood victims, but the tragedy remained indelibly in the Queen’s mind.
　　　For the longer term benefit of the rural poor, Her Majesty instructed a team to visit villagers in the northeast and to urge them to produce more of their beautiful mudmee tie-dyed silk that is traditional to the region. The idea was that a revival of farming communities. This was the beginning of what today has become the widely effective SUPPORT project.
　　　Officially known as the Foundation for the Promotion of Supplementary Occupations and Related Techniques, SUPPORT was personally established by the Queen in July 1976. “It was the intention of Her Majesty to create work that would provide a supplementary income for poor farming families and so help prevent them being driven from their land by burdensome debts,” said a royal official. “Her Majesty was concerned that Thailand as a rice producing country might lose land to purely industry, and she desired that the people should be able to continue producing food to feed the whole country and to export to the rest of the world.”
　　　Another important aim pf SUPPORT is to revive and preserve ancient Thai handicrafts that are in danger of becoming extinct. Besides the northeast’s famous mudmee silk, these include prae-wa embroidered silk, delicate yan lipao basketry, nielloware and the intricate gold and silver decorated inlay known as khram. In total, 26 crafts were identified, all of which not only require a great deal of skill, time and patience, but also then had few surviving practitioners. For example, with only one teacher in the entire country, khram inlay work was in very real danger of vanishing completely.
　　　In order to achieve her dual objective of helping the rural poor and preserving traditional crafts, Her majesty established SUPPORT with initially one training center at Chitralada Palace in Bangkok. She personally interviewed poor families to select trainees, who are given an allowance, as well as board and lodging, while undergoing training in the craft of their choice. For some activities, such as embroidery or artificial flower making, skills can be acquired in two to three months; for others, nielloware, for example, training can take up to three years. At the end of their course the most able students are asked to become teachers in their turn, so ensuring skills will be handed on to the next generation.
　　　Such as been the success of the UPPORT programme that there are today training centers in all regions of the country, the biggest at Chitralada Palace having up to 500 trainees at any one time. In total, more than 50,000 otherwise uneducated rural workers and hilltribe people have graduated from the programme to date.
　　　As a well-rounded scheme. SUPPORT follows up training and production with marketing and promotion. Finished goods are bought at fair prices and sold through the Foundation’s own Chitralada shops and other non-profit institutions. Indeed, the work is no charitable cosmetic and is grounded in an essentially practical philosophy, In the words of Her Majesty :”Before urging villagers to make anything, we must be certain that the products will be marketable, not for charity only.
Charitable merchandise does not provide real support, We must put them on their way so that they can stand on their own feet.”
　　　A commentator has remarked that Her Majesty is “a very active president of SUPPEORT, not just a figure head. She inspects each piece and will make criticisms if it is not up to standard. She always emphasizes quality over quantity.”
　　　This is really the key to the enormous success of SUPPORT. The work of the Foundation is nothing if not practical. Villagers learn or re-learn how to make traditional handicrafts not so much as craft for craft’s sake(although the preservation of dying techniques is part of it)but more because Queen Sirikir has been instrumental in showing those handicrafts continue to have a real market value.
Indeed, Her Majesty is SUPPORT’s best customer, using handicrafts products as gifts to visiting heads of state. Moreover, the Queen has personally demonstrated that traditional handicrafts still have a practical role to play. For example, valuable publicity for mudmee silk was generated by Her Majesty when she commissioned a wardrobe of the material specially designed by Eric Mortenson of the house of Balmain.
　　　In popularizing the handicrafts—and hence enhancing their marketability—Queen Sirikit has played as vital a role as in her primary efforts to initiate the various projects. She has advised on the design of “National Costumes” for Thai women and has used not only mudmee silk and cotton in her own clothes, but also other traditional materials such as hilltribe embroidery and chok woven silk and woven brocade.
　　　Accessories, too, have been personally popularized by Her Majesty who has again revitalized dying crafts by exemplifying how they can serve today’s fashions. Most striking is the case of yan lipao vine weaving, an old craft from southern.