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Royal Patronage of a people and a culture |
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 The
story of Her Majesty’s championship
of the rural poor and her patronage and promotion
of traditional handicrafts dates back virtually
to the beginning of the reign, and underscores
the essential concept of monarchy as interpreted
and practiced by His Majesty King Bhumibol
Adulyadej and Queen Sirikit.
In 1955, just a few years after ascending the throne, His Majesty the King, accompanied
by the Queen, made a 22-day tour of Northeast Thailand, the most neglected and
poorest area of the country. The people, most of whom had never seen a Thai monarch
in person before, flocked to pay homage to Their Majesties.
The pioneering tour was to set the pattern for the reign and every year the King
spends seven to eight months outside of Bangkok touring all parts of the country.
These provincial tours, usually made in the company of the Queen, are far more
than mere exercises in public relations and serve very practical ends. A man
of considerable personal accomplishment, King Bhumibol takes a direct hand in
initiating and promoting development projects, especially those concerned with
agriculture, designed to eradicate poverty and boost national growth.
In this work His Majesty is admirably supported by Queen Sirikit who, in a 1979
interview, remarked; “If you cannot abolish poverty, you cannot bring peace
to your country, or help your government.”
With a great personal interest in science and technology, King Bhumibol concentrates
on major development projects as wide ranging as irrigation and crop substitution
programs. As the perfect complement to such endeavors, Her Majesty has focused
attention on the family and, in particular, the role of rural women. Thai women
have traditionally been adept at all manner of handicrafts, weaving the family
cloth being just the most obvious example. The family unit and craft production
have thus historically gone largely hand in hand, and it has been Queen Sirikit’s
genius to see that what has served the past can also serve the present. While
Her Majesty extends assistance in many ways and through diverse development schemes,
it is her promotion of traditional arts and crafts that best epitomizes her endeavors.
Through encouraging and providing the means for the rural poor to revive old
hadicrafts, the Queen shows a way for families to secure a source of valuable
supplementary income while, at the same time, a fresh lease of life is given
to time-honored crafts that may otherwise die out.
The origins of Queen Sirikit’s specific involvement with indigenous handicrafts
dates from the early 1970s, where a disastrous flood in Thailand’s northeast
region destroyed crops and caused widespread misery and deprivation. Their Majesties
visited the stricken area and provided food and other necessities for the immediate
relief of the flood victims, but the tragedy remained indelibly in the Queen’s
mind.
For the longer term benefit of the rural poor, Her Majesty instructed a team
to visit villagers in the northeast and to urge them to produce more of their
beautiful mudmee tie=dyed silk that is traditional to the region. The idea was
that a revival of local handicrafts could help provide additional income to supplement
the livelihood of farming communities. This was the beginning of what today has
become the widely effective SUPPORT project.
Officially know as the Foundation for the Promotion of Supplementary Occupations
and Related Techniques SUPPORT was personally established by the Queen in July
1976. “It was the intention of Her Majesty to create work that would provide
a supplementary income for poor farming families and so help prevent them being
driven from their land by burdensome debts,” said a royal official. “Her
Majesty was concerned that Thailand as a rice producing country might lose land
to purely industry, and she desired that the people should be able to continue
producing food to feed the whole country and to export the rest of the world.”
Another important aim of SUPPORT is to revive and preserve ancient Thai handicrafts
are in danger of becoming extinct. Besides the northeast’s famous mudmee
silk, these include prae-wo embroidered silk, delicate yan lipao basketry, nielloware
and the intricate gold and silver decorated inlay known as khram. In total, 26
crafts were identified, all of which not only require a grate deal of skill,
time and patience, but also then had few surviving practitioners. For example,
with only one teacher in the entire country, khram inlay work was very real danger
of vanishing completely.
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