About 45 minutes outside of Chiang Mai we ventured into a small village called Muang Kung to find Thailand's version of The Pottery Trail. And find it we did.
There were two major neighborhoods we visited. In one area, the front of each of the 60 potter's homes were decorated with this traditional water drinking vessel. Thailand is very hot and in the "old Thailand" most homes offered cold drinking water to passersby - the water was housed in covered jars just like this one with a laddle on top, for all to use. Though these vessels are no longer used, they have become a welcome symbol for this pottery community. And what a welcome we received!
In nearby Muang Kung, most of the potters we met were woman and all of the work was handbuilt. This woman is making one of the many "happy" animals we saw. Smiling pigs, elephants, goats....
And monkeys! These all lined the little street potteries by the hundreds. And all the neighbors had ceramic animal figurines of all sizes in their yards.
And where do they sell these playful figures, you might ask - well in the rural backroads of Thailand, where chickens and roosters walk through studios and around kilns, the internet is their main source of income - shipping to stores all over the world!
The figurines are light, joyful and playful, but potting is hard, back-breaking work in Thailand. All the clay is dug up from the earth all around this small village, cleaned of pebbles and rocks, slaked down with water, set up to dry, wedged, bagged and then made ready for the potters. Here, a woman working the clay the morning we walked through this neighborhood.
They gave us some clay to feel, so plastic and smooth, it was quite nice to work with!
And every small pottery had the same kiln design; a small, wood-fired updraft kiln, with metal roofing as the lid to the kiln.
In addition to small figurines, it seemed this section of Muang Kung was a mini brick making facility. We saw hundreds of bricks lined up freshly made....
And even more drying in the sun....
The brick making molds were sitting around - the potters were even making the special arch bricks, used mostly just to build arches of kilns, doorways, and pizza ovens, for example.
The last stop in this section of the village was a ceramic artist and sculptor who designed these fine cast concrete sculptures, here called "stoneware".
Here is our friend, the sculptor...
Next stop on the Thailand Pottery Trail.. The Muang Kung Pottery Village.
Here, all the potters were throwing on a wheel, firing large wood fired kilns and making hundreds of traditional style earthenware vessels.
The potters of Muang Kung work in their backyard studios making traditional forms....
Buyers come by to place orders....
Once the work is made, it is packed up and the buyers send trucks up to load up and pay the artist.
All the vessels are fired in large noborigama style wood kilns...
And even though the kiln is fired for 5 days, it is still a low temperature earthenware
Some of the work made here at Muang Kung is burnished and smoke fired.
This potter was sitting quietly burnishing small oil lanterns. We think she must have been 85 - 87 years old and has been burnishing most of her life.
She told our interpreter that she gets paid 1.5 baht per pot for burnishing and she can complete as many as 50 pots per day. 33 baht equals $1 u.s.
So she gets paid about $1.75 per day.
Wow. It's humbling to visit these communities. So basic is their equipment, their means, their salaries....
So beautiful, their lives.
Next stop.... The temples of Sukhothai.
