Around Chiang Mai there are a number of craft factories. The publicity indicates that you can see how the product is made, and of course there may be a shop involved where you will be encouraged, by force if necessary, to make a purchase. Let’s go to the silk factory where a token silk worm in a glass case is the only indication of a manufacturing process. OK, you’ve seen that, now please check out our massive shop. Next stop is the silver factory where a lout with a hammer is banging on a lump of what may be silver but is probably tin. Now let’s look at the shop. Maybe I am exaggerating a little, but none of these places actually make all the goods that they have on display. Apart from the umbrella factory.
Yes, there is a large shop, full of brightly coloured umbrellas of the type that would be useless in a rain storm but would look pretty as an ornament, if that is your sort of thing. It isn’t ours, which is another reason I like the place; she who must be obeyed never wants to buy anything.
Nobody welcomes you when you arrive, which means nobody hassles you, and you are free to walk right through the shop to the factory where, surprise, they are actually making umbrellas. A lathe produces the round wooden collar, and then a line of ladies produces the frame of the umbrella:
The covers are then glued onto the frame:
This batch used pre-printed covers, but most are hand-painted by the artists in the next section:
Not sure my eyes could cope with having to paint this many spots:
They do fans too:
After painting, the fans are dried using an advanced thermo-solar process (patents pending):
The only hassle you get is from the painters, who must be on piecework because they are keen to stop what they are doing and paint a design on your phone, clothing or any other object that might accept paint. Three years ago I let them persuade me to paint a dragon on the side of my camera bag for the grand sum of 50 baht. I assumed it would rub off in a couple of weeks, but three years of mud, rain, abuse and occasional washing has left little impression:
Seemed appropriate that my new bag for the GF1 should get a similar treatment and fish were decided upon:
Our friends volunteered their clothing to be painted. Perhaps I should have explained beforehand that it doesn’t wash off:
Twenty minutes outside of Chiang Mai and well worth the trip.
Comments 🔗
2010-01-26| Pete saysI had a butterfly painted on a cloth wallet there (or a very similar place)in 1987. The wallet is still in fairly regular use and the butterfly is still on it. Well worth the 20B I paid at the time.
2010-01-26| Jock saysAha it’s Smithy …. he’s obviously mellowed in his later years … not so long ago he would have went for the allover bodypaint job …