The beautiful needs perfection and flaws in equal measure. The perfect directs the eye to a thing, the imperfect directs it into it. You can stand in front of a Benjarong vase and ask yourself for a long time why you would like to own it, why it might be necessary for this vase to decorate your home so that you can always look at it calmly. You can then also consider what it would be useful for before you buy it. That’s what you ask when you’re looking for reasons. “It’s just a vase,” says Noo Lek, the artist, unperturbed. “You can do whatever you want with them. Most people buy them as jewelry.”
Noo Lek, 67, shows visitors around her shop, which is filled with painted vases, mugs, coffee and tea sets and decorative plates. Benjarong literally means five colors and is pronounced Bendsharong. “My eyesight has gotten too bad to paint by myself,” says Noo Lek, leading the way into the workshop where a young man is sitting at an old kitchen table dabbing paint on small porcelain elephants. He does this with the care and calm of a bomb disposal technician, 14 brushes are lying next to him on the edge of the table, and 14 paint pots are in front of him. “It’s an art that you learn over the years,” says Noo Lek, “every step has to be carried out very carefully.”
First a pattern is drawn on the porcelain, then colored in, finally the gold finish is applied, with firing between each process. In the end, you hold a piece in your hand whose colors gently rise to a structure, accentuated by gold lines. The light is bound by the gold, it is refracted in the pattern, it holds the gaze longer and more intensely than crockery usually does. However, the magic only works if you look at a single piece. There is usually so much of it lying around in a shop that you quickly feel as if you have landed in the treasury of an Arabian prince.
Five family clans have dedicated themselves to the Benjarong in the village of Don Kai Dee, an hour’s drive from Bangkok. Here the village chief Urai Thaeng Eim.
(Photo: David Pfeifer)
Noo Lek belongs to one of the five family clans in Don Kai Dee. The village, about an hour’s drive from Bangkok, is dedicated to the Benjarong. It has been practiced here for generations, with more than a hundred members passing on the tradition. Strolling through Don Kai Dee, you quickly feel like you’re in a hippie commune with a passion for decoration, everything is colourful, overloaded and in a good mood. Waist-high vases in the gardens, richly decorated gates, every wall was still decorated with Benjarong quarry. It is an art that enchants on a small scale and kills on a large scale. So you have to concentrate.
The portrait of the Thai king Rama V adorns many plates and vases
The village leader, a gentle yet resolute woman named Urai Thaeng Eim, 65, sits on her small veranda. All five families are led by women, they coordinate who specializes in which pattern so as not to get in each other’s way. It all looks very similar at first, but of course it’s all about the details. Thaeng Eim pulls a plate from a stack, an old pattern from 1900, from the time of King Rama V, the great modernizer and opener of Thailand, to this day a revered monarch in the country. Urai Thaeng Eim also wears it around his neck as an amulet, and his portrait adorns numerous plates and vases in the village.
Also in Bangkok you can see Benjarong on every corner, especially when you go to the royal palace, to the museum or to pray. The facade of Wat Arun, the most famous Buddhist temple, is also decorated with benjarong. Rama V brought the technique from China to Thailand, first the aristocrats bought it, soon everyone who could afford it. Benjarong pieces are still a status symbol for the upper middle class in Thailand today. A cup with saucer and decorative lid costs between 800 and 1,200 baht, a large vase 20,000 baht, the beautiful coffee service with dragon motifs, complete with a decorative box: 30,000 baht – around 800 euros.
A Meissen or Nymphenburg collector just shrugs his shoulders, but by Thai standards that’s a lot of money. It’s mostly sold to locals, the tourists tend to take the stuff that’s on offer at Chatuchak Market and painted on in some sweatshops beforehand. “It’s also hand-painted, but the gold rim turns black after a while,” says Urai Thaeng Eim. Their products, on the other hand, “are dishwasher safe, the colors only go bad in the microwave”. She started Benjarong painting at the age of ten, she can do every stage of production freehand, sketching, coloring, applying gold. You have to try painting for a year before you can touch the precious pieces and colours. “It’s quicker if you’ve studied art beforehand,” says Thaeng Eim. She never wanted to do anything else, “most here learn it from childhood and stick with it. You can also paint in the home office.” It is a satisfying, almost meditative work, you can feel it while watching. They even have a Bejanrong-decorated guesthouse in the small community where you can stay overnight. That could also be necessary, because after a while you hardly know your way around, you have looked at too much, either want to take everything or nothing at all with you.
However, it is worth making a choice on the spot, because things are rarely available abroad. There is a website but no regulated export. “People don’t necessarily appreciate handwork,” says Urai Thaeng Eim, “no piece looks exactly like the other.” Others, on the other hand, get caught on the border between perfection and error and then take two decorative mugs with them, even though the cupboard at home is already bursting. But the cups are more likely to be on the shelf anyway. Just because they have a function doesn’t mean you have to use them. They’re just cups. They are beautiful.