Woodcarving in Thailand

During my visit to Thailand, i had seen a lot of craft products, in Thailand they made almost everything from natural resources, silver making, natural silk, jade, diamonds and stones, terracotta, bamboo, lacquerware and others. What do i really interested here which is the finest of woodcarving. Thailand is one of the most biggest exporter in craft products industry, beside Indonesia and Philippines also had a big share in this pie. Wood Carving Industry is the specialty in Thailand, thay also had a number of raw material for this industry.

I visited a wood factory in Chiangmai (north of Thai), this growing industry spare a lot of job vacancies for their locals, theres no limits as this carving job for male only. Its open to anybody who had the passion to carved wood.

This young lady here is very passionate in wood carving, her work is very fine and her most favorite is carving flower motifs. She carved this wooden table slowly untill its done.

Thailand Wood Carving had an identity in their motifs, from my observation, most of the motifs are from religious motifs. Some of them carving scenery like villages, forest, and trees. This is one of the village scenery carved on a piece of wood.

Below: A young man carving a scenery of elephants. Elephants are the most favorite subject matter for them to carved.
He sketch with pencils on the piece of wood before starting his carving.

But this guy dont even had any skecthes. Below is finish carving of forest scenery, you can see the layers of the carving made it apear 3D.
Not even decorations, they also made furnitures from wood that enchance with their carving specialty motifs.

It is so exiting when looking these two foreign child learning carving from them! They also willing to teach people that intrested in carving. These two little brother and sister is so eager to carved by their own, its so funny to see them quarelling to take turn to do the carving.

Below: some close up for the monkeys.

I do really hope Malaysians woodcraft industry could be growing as big as Thailand. Malaysia also had pottential in woodcarving, i had seen and visit some wood products producer in arround Malaysia and they seems to be good in carving. Malaysia also had a big number of woods supply, it must be not problem in raw material for this industry. Below is a unique wooden bottlecase done in Thailand.

Below: Carved bowl that produced for the worlwide market from Thailand. However I really appreciate craft products from any country as long as it had a value of finest quality. I enjoy this visit to Thailand and keen to had a second trip, it was so enjoyable and a lot of experience that I had learned. If you guys had intention to visit Thai, do spare a litttle time for visiting their woodcraft factory.

Below is wooden bowl with carving leaf motif that done by me, it is still in the progress work by a wood crafter in Felda Tenang Johor. I really hope it can be done with finest quality, will update u guys when the bowl is ready.