Raw or Pre-Fired: Kiln Construction at Sawankhalok, North Central Thailand, as a Guide to Ceramic History
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Raw or Pre-Fired: Kiln Construction at Sawankhalok, North Central Thailand, as a Guide to Ceramic History Don Hein,1 Gary Hill,2,3 and W. Ross H. Ramsay1
Sawankhalok, located in north central Thailand, was an early stoneware ceramic production site where the first kilns were dug cave-like into the natural ground, a method used in China for thousands of years. After a century or so, kilns at Sawankhalok began to be constructed of brick. It is suggested that if the bricks were pre-fired then an external influence may have been responsible. To the contrary, if raw unfired clay was used in the construction of the kilns the evolution was more likely a consequence of conceptual continuity. With the aid of chemical and mineralogical analyses it is shown that the kiln bricks were unfired at the time of kiln construction thereby suggesting that traditional conservatism, apparent in many aspects of the industry, caused processes to remain unaltered in the absence of a persuasive reason for change. These conclusions reflect on the degree of indigenous technology and artistic development associated with Sawankhalok ceramics as opposed to external influence. KEY WORDS: Sawankhalok; ceramics; kiln; bricks.
INTRODUCTION The production of glazed stoneware ceramics in Thailand began between the 10th and 13th centuries, probably in the north, perhaps at Phayao, Nan, or at some other as yet undiscovered location (Fig. 1(A)). Burial tomb discoveries with an antiquity of several thousand years, show that kiln-fired stoneware ceramics almost certainly originated in China (Medley, 1976). Dissemination of production 1 Deakin
University, Melbourne 3125, Australia. Trobe University, Bendigo 3550, Australia. whom correspondence should be addressed at School of Visual Arts and Design, La Trobe University, PO Box 199, Bendigo, Victoria 3552, Australia; e-mail: [email protected].
2 La 3 To
247 C 2004 Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 1092-7697/04/1200-0247/0
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Hein, Hill, and Ramsay
Fig. 1. Sketch map of Ban Ko Noi west bank kilns with insets of central northern Thailand (A) and kiln nodes at Sawankhalok (B).
Raw or Pre-Fired: Kiln Construction at Sawankhalok
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technology occurred slowly, passing from one site to the next. It reached Vietnam in the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.–220 A.D.) and other southeast Asian states hundreds of years later. The immediate source of the technology underlying stoneware production in Thailand is not known and the influence that founded the first stoneware industry might have come from Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, or even Myanmar. It has been argued that when a new ceramic production site was established the technological characteristics introduced were an exact copy (or nearly so) of those existing at the parent site at the time of transfer (Hein, 1999). Given the distinctions that appear over time at different sites, a possible source of influence might be any site with a production method (at any point in its operational life) that matched the founding technology of the recipient site. As an
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