BUDDHIST PICTORIAL TEXTILES

In mainland Southeast Asia, the pictorial representations on Thai, Lao and Cambodian textiles are unique. Some of these surviving antique textiles from the end of 19th century to early 20th century visualise depictions of local religious beliefs. Theravada Buddhist themes and Hindu mythology blend in astounding artistic details on silk ikat or painted on cotton. These pictorial textiles are used in community religious practice and celebrations held at the end of the rainy season or the Buddhist Lent. M.L. Pawinee Santisiri’s collection of Buddhist pictorial textiles from these countries ranges from Pha Phra Bot, painted cloth banners, to Pidan, intricately woven ikat “ceiling cloth.” They illustrate episodes in the Buddha’s life, the Vessantara Jataka and the Triphum or the “Three Realms” cosmology. M.L. Pawinee Santisiri is an award-winning designer, former president of the Design & Objects Association, founder of Sahacha, and co-founder of Yothaka and Ayodhya. Her companies provide interior design services as well as furniture and home accessories design, manufacture and export businesses using natural fibres and environmentally friendly materials such as water hyacinth. She has collected more than a thousand pieces of of old textiles from Southeast Asia and other countries for over three decades and showed her “Pha Phra Ves” scrolls in 2021. She is also on the TTS’s Board of Directors. Dr Navamintr Tom Vitayakul works in his family’s businesses of the Rose Bangkok, the Rose Residence and Ruen Urai. He is a Council Member at The Siam Society Under Royal Patronage and a Committee member at the Thai Textile Society. As a collector, he spoke at three Collector’s Corner programmes on his textile collections from Thailand, Cambodia, India and Indonesia and contributed several articles and photos in TTS’s former newsletters and Pah Thai.