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Royal
Patronage of a people and a culture |
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 In order to achieve her dual objective of helping the rural poor preserving traditional crafts, Her Majesty established SUPPORT with initially one training centre at Chitralada Palace in Bangkok. She personally interviewed poor families to select trainees, who are given an allowance, as well as board and lodging, while undergoing training in the craft of their choice. For some activites, such as embroidery or artificial flower making, skills can be acquired in two to three months; for others, melloware, for example, training can take up to three years. At the end of their course the most able students are asked to become teachers in their turn, so ensuring skill will be handed on to the next generation.
Such as been success of the SUPPORT of the SUPPORT programme that there are today training centres in all regions of the country, the biggest at Chitralada Palace having up to 500 trainees at any one time. In total, more than 50,000 otherwise uneducated rural workers and hill tribe people have graduated from the programme to date.
As a well-rounded scheme, SUPPORT follows up training and production with marketing and promotion. Finished goods are bought at fair prices and sold through the Foundation's own Chitralada shops and other non-profit institutions. Indeed, the work is no charitable cosmetic and is grounded in an essentially practical philosophy. In the words of Her Majesty "Before urging villagers to make anything, we must be certain that the products will be marketable, not for charity only. Charitable merchandise does not provide real support. We must put them on their way so that they can stand on their own feet."
A commentator has remarked that Her Majesty is "a very active president of SUPPORT, not just a figurehead. She inspects each piece and will make criticisms if it is not up to standard. She always emphasizes quality over quantity."
This is really the key to the enormous success of SUPPORT. The work of the Foundation is nothing if not practical. Villagers learn or re-learn how to make traditional handicrafts not so much as craft for crafts' sake (although the preservation of dying techniques is part of it) but more because Queen Sirikit has been instrumental showing those handicrafts continue to have a real market value.
Indeed, Her Majesty is SUPPORT's best customer, using handicraft products as gifts to visiting heads of state. Moreover, the Queen has personally demonstrated that traditional handicrafts still have a practical role to play. For example, valuable publicity for mudmee silk was generated by Her Majesty when she commissioned a wardrobe of the material specially designed by Eric Mortenson of the House of Balmain.
In popularizing the handicrafts - and hence enhancing their marketability - Queen Sirikit has played as vital a role as in her primary efforts to initiate the various projects. She has advised on the design of "National Costumes" for Thai women and has used not only mudmee silk and cotton in her own clothes, but also other traditional materials such as hill tribe embroidery and chok woven silk and woven brocade.
Accessories, too, have been personally popularized by Her Majesty who has agion revitalized dying crafts by exemplifying how they can serve today's fashions. Most striking is the case of yan lipao vine weaving, an old craft from southern Thailand. Various durable household utensils - bowls, trays, betel-nut boxes, tea caddies and more - can be woven from this particular species of either black or brown vine, but today it is best know in the form of exquisite and strikingly unusual handbags.
Queen Sirikit's attention was first drawn to yan lipao several years ago when she visited an exhibition of intrioately woven items produced by the disabled. Impressed by what she saw she spearheaded a yan lipao weaving are teaching project. Since then the popularity of yan lipao handbags has soared, largely through Her Majesty's example of how they serve as a most attractive accessory, superb in themselves and the perfect complement to clothes fashioned from traditional Thai materials.
The result of Her Majesty's efforts and the ongoing work of the SUPPORT foundation is seen not merely in the revival of old crafts and the creation of new fashions. For the rural poor trained in these various handicrafts family incomes can be doubled, thus encouraging self-support and providing the means to be free from total dependence on agriculture that is subject to the vagaries of nature.
And the work not only continues but is ever seeking to expand into new areas. Efforts towards the preservation of Thai arts and crafts underpin the Foundation, but today its help and interest pervade every aspect of village life from medical care to land management and the more judicious use of natural resources.
In recognition of her work, Queen Sirikit has been the recipient of a number of prestigious international awards The citation of one of them - the 1979 Ceres Gold Medal of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization - offers perhaps the finest, truest praise of all. The Queen, it said, has helped rural communities "look well into their households.and profit from the fruit of their own hands."
One
might add that in helping the rural poor and
personally promoting the products of their
labor, Her Majesty has further given countless
other people joy in rediscovering the rich
variety and enduring beauty of Thailand crafts.
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