From his two-room home outside Orléans (France), Tiao Somsanith embroiders
by night to complete a prayer fan, intended for a pagoda in Laos.
Designs inspired by childhood memories.
Laos |
Tiao
Somsanith is among the last of a dying breed skilled in gold-thread embroidering,
an ancient tradition from the court of Luang Prabang in Laos. Today, he is trying
to save this vanishing art, without resorting to commercialism
The Laotian prince-embroiderer
Tiao Somsanith has lived in the French royal city of Orléans, or more exactly
in the suburb of Saint-Marceau, since 1985. To reach the two small rooms of his home
filled with Laotian court treasures, you must leave Orléans and cross the
Loire River. With a little imagination, it recalls the Mekong, which flows past Luang
Prabang, once the royal capital of Laos, where the smooth-faced, nimble-fingered
“young man” was born 43 years ago.
That court vanished after the Pathet Lao communists took power in 1975 in the aftermath
of the Vietnam War. “My maternal grandfather was the last viceroy of Laos,” says
the prince. “My paternal grandfather was a famous court historian, and his wife was
an excellent embroiderer. My father was advisor to the king in Vientiane, the administrative
capital.”
A
secret garden
He
has not lost stock of his rank and duties. “The mission of the royal family and the
viceroy was to protect culture and tradition,” he says. “One of them is the gold
thread embroidery that is specific to the Luang Prabang court. Only women of noble
birth were allowed to learn this craft, which probably came from China, judging from
the technique and symbolism of designs, such as the dragon.”
During the Laotian cultural week last March in Orléans, visitors could admire
a lavish red and gold silk ensemble that the queen would have worn either for her
coronation in Luang Prabang, had the monarchy not been abolished, or to celebrate
New Year’s, had she not perished in a re-education camp. It took the prince one long
year working at night to make the garment, since he earns a living by running a daytime
creativity and self-expression workshop for mentally handicapped adults. Before that,
he gained degrees in fine arts and psychology in France.
“I drew inspiration from the writings of my father, who was in charge of protocol,”
he says. “I remember the festivals that punctuated life at the court, where an appropriate
outfit was necessary for each ceremony. This work represents both my secret garden,
my history, and the cultural heritage of Laos.”
The costume reflects the court’s hierarchies, with colours and embroideries corresponding
to social status. Culling from a repertory based on wildlife, flowers, mythology
and Buddhist iconography, embroiderers were nevertheless free to compose nuances,
the movement of embroidered patterns and to model reliefs with gold and silver braiding.
“The yellow of the jacket, reserved for the queen, recalls the dazzling sun, and
the red of the skirt evokes the blood of life,” explains Somsanith.
An
arduous apprenticeship
The
royal ornamentation embroidered by the prince includes golden phoenixes taking flight
among interlacing plant patterns. Like an endless river, they continue on the back
of the jacket, suggesting the eternal life cycle and the wheel of reincarnation.
“I’ve embroidered good-luck bats, birds of paradise with elephant trunks and butterflies
symbolizing the ephemeral,” he says.
Somsanith borrowed these designs from inscriptions he gazed at on the ceilings of
pagodas as a child. He embroidered without using the carved wooden templates, which
were indispensable for beginners who fastened them to silk with big stitches and
reproduced the outlines with gold thread.
Only experienced embroiderers between the ages of 30 and 40 reached that level of
perfection. The road was long and the apprenticeship arduous. The prince, who was
the last in a family of nine children living in Vientiane, spent summers with his
grandmother in Luang Prabang. “I was so rambunctious that my parents sent me to keep
her company,” he recalls laughing. “I also met some of the requirements for learning
this exclusively feminine profession, which is passed down from mother to daughter.”
At six, like all nimble-fingered apprentices, the prince was coating silk threads
with wax to make them straighter and threading them into needles for his grandmother
and aunts, who worked in a special room every morning. In the hope of being released
from this painstaking work, sometimes the young prince secretly finished his grandmother’s
embroidery, trying to copy her style.
“By the time I was 10 or 12, I already had a certain amount of experience,” he says.
“My grandmother probably guessed what I was up to, and introduced me to the art of
purling by letting me finish the buds on a bouquet of flowers she had started.”
Back
to the pagoda
The
different steps in an embroiderer’s career were clearly spelled out. Little girls
traced the edges framing the designs and decorated pillows and prayer cushions. Adolescents
embroidered skirts and collars. Adult women made their wedding dresses, ceremonial
costumes and burial clothes. Between 50 and 60, at the peak of their skills, they
gradually stopped making secular garments to focus on religious accessories intended
for pagodas.
Religion is exactly the means by which Somsanith intends to breathe new life into
his art. In August 2001, the embroiderer-prince is going to Luang Prabang to offer
one of his works–a prayer fan decorated with a Buddha in the teaching position–to
the Sene pagoda.
Now this guardian of an endangered tradition has just one goal in mind: passing it
on to young Laotians, and introducing the diaspora to the art of living that goes
with it.
He refuses to give into the temptation of the market. “Some of my relatives embroider
to order for tourists, especially from Thailand, and rich families of the diaspora.
Gold-thread embroidery is acquiring a market value and losing its meaning. The women
wearing them are parvenus who only care about the glittering outer appearance of
things without knowing their intrinsic value.”
The prince wants to pass on both technique and meaning. “Embroidery is more than
just a technique…. Even though an embroidered garment might only be worn once during
an exceptional ceremony, it requires an apprenticeship that is so long it builds
character, an idea that has fallen by the wayside. Passing this tradition down from
one generation to the next also teaches future artists that they are merely practitioners.
Before setting down to work, my grandmother performed her devotions to the inspiring
spirits and the ancestors who trained her to bring about her act of creation.”
With exhibitions, lectures and a documentary made with the French national research
council, Somsanith is also sounding the alarm on the disappearance of other crafts
connected to gold-thread embroidery, such as lacquering. “The last master lacquerer
is 81 years old and no longer working. He has stopped making the baskets decorated
with a gilded plant frieze that were used as models for skirt hems.” |
