W I D E W O R L D OF C R A F T
can watch craftspeople at work
and visit a showroom of exqui-
site tea sets, platters, chests,
and furniture. But it’s at the
smaller family-owned shops
where you’ll find the real heart
of the craft. The Golden Cuck-
oo, for example, is a family-run
shop stretching back four gen-
erations. At Mya Thaw T ar,
another modest shop, craftsman
Sein Naing explains the time-
consuming steps of the craft,
taught to him by his father and
grandfather.
“Each piece starts with a
bamboo or horsehair base,
which is then coated with
seven to 16 layers of lacquer,
which comes from
Melanor-
rhoea
- similar to a rubber tree
but found in the jungles of
northern Myanmar,” he says.
After each coat, the piece is set
aside in an underground drying
room for seven days, then
smoothed with a knife. Three
coats of buffalo bone powder
go on next, followed by thin,
high-quality cotton and more
lacquer for strength.
The piece is now ready for
its intricate design. Using teak-
wood charcoal, cinnabar,
indigo, and other natural pow-
dered color, the craftsperson
creates an ornamental treasure
using a small etching knife or
needle. The finished product is
dried underground for a month,
then polished with a petrified
root powder before going to the
showroom for sale. A small cup
can take six months to produce;
Naing’s favorite piece, a large
chest designed on the inside as
well as out, took him three
years to complete.
“Each piece has its own long
journey,” he says. “At any time
I am working on hundreds of
pieces at various stages of
the process.”
Eastward from Bagan lies
Inle Lake, a magical place
where villages and monasteries
rise from the water on wooden
Right: Artisans pull the
sticky fibers from lotus
stems by hand to turn
into lotus “silk.”
The fabric originally
was made for sacred
gannents; a single set of
monk’s robes requires as
many as 220,000 stems.
Middle: In its natural
state, lotus thread is a
creamy white. Here, a
number of dyed skeins
hang in the sun to dry.
stilts amid floating gardens.
The only way to get around is
by longboat. This is the only
place in the world where fabric
is woven from lotus plants.
The women who craft the
material do so by hand, as has
been done for centuries, origi-
nally to create sacred robes
for Buddhist monks.
In a painstaking process,
the artisans pull the sticky
fibers from inside the stem of
the padonma kyar lotus by
hand; a full set of monk’s robes
requires as many as 220,000
stems to produce. Once the
fibers are twisted into threads
and spun on a spindle, they’re
Left: This young
woman, who lives in
the hills surrounding
Inlc Lake, came to the
lake to shop at the
market.
Right: Lotus yarn is
transformed into fabric
on large wooden hand-
looms, in a process
unchanged throughout
centuries.
094 american craft fcb/marn
