…according to Manassanan Benjarongjinda, 77, a silk dyer at Baan Krua Thai Silk
In the past, the Baan Krua community dyed silk to supply to their only client, Jim Thompson. Everything changed when Jim Thompson himself disappeared in Malaysia in 1967
Everyone in the Baan Krua community was shocked and devastated when Thompson disappeared. At the time there was no other market. Eventually, the families in the community gave up and switched to do something else. Luckily, a group of Muslims from Phum Riang in Surat Thani moved to Bangkok and came to rent houses around this area. They were silk weavers who sold their silk at Pahurat and Silom. They asked me if they could dye silk for them. I’ve continued on dyeing silk since then—it’s been 63 years already.
You need to bleach silk before you start dyeing
Unprocessed silk is yellow. You need to desaturate that color by soaking the silk in boiling water mixed with sodium carbonate (aka soda ash) and acid soap (one soap per one kilogram of silk). Turn the silk around from time to time for 30 minutes. After that, all the silk is placed into a spinning machine before hanging on rails to dry. This is before the dyeing process begins. The time to complete the dyeing production is uncertain and mainly depends on the weather. If the sun comes out, you can dye silk in the morning and leave them to dry in the afternoon. But if it rains, it can take days to dry silk indoors.
Dyeing silk is a lot easier these days than it used to be
When we first started dyeing silk, the Baan Krua community had no water supply. We used water from the canal to dye and wash silk. Now, we use a stove instead of Chinese braziers, gas instead of firewood, and a large pot that can contain over ten kilograms of raw silk and water instead of a metal bucket. But the household silk dyeing industry is shrinking. Many of my former employees from Isaan have quit to become massage therapists.
One of the keys to success in dyeing silk is getting the perfect mix of colors
My employee once left a silk dyeing pot unattended and the color turned out to be the wrong shade. When things go wrong, silk dyers need to do anything to get the color right. The worst thing that can happen is having to use a bleaching substance and soda to get rid of all the color and restart the whole process again.
>847/1 Trok Ban Krua Nua Soi 9, Ratchathewi, 02 215 9864. BTS National Stadium