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Laos Essential Artistry Posting Page
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Ah, exclusive silk scarves from Laos! Really, considering all our textiles are handwoven and not mass produced, they are in a sense, "exclusive," aren't they? We're being a little facetious saying this, but how many people are selling any silk textiles from Muang Vaen on the Internet? As I said in our last post, the women in Muang Vaen are true artists and their handwoven silk textiles are some of the best in all of Laos. But what's really fun is to find something you think is really special, and a year and a half ago when we went to Muang Vaen and purchased an assortment of textiles there was one design in particular we liked. It was a little shorter than the other textiles, a little thinner and softer and we were very impressed with how the design integrated bands of ikat that provided a nice contrast to the naga and bird motifs. We didn't list this textile for sale and kept it thinking we would take it back to Muang Vaen on our next trip and see if we could order a collection of textiles based on the same design. The textile we kept is seen in the photo below.
 When we went to Laos last December we took the textile back and scheduled a two day trip to Sam Neua where we could then drive to Muang Vaen for one day. Since Sam Neua is in a small valley in the mountains, it's often fogged in during the "cool" season of December, January and February and if it's fogged in planes can't land so flights are often canceled and flying to Sam Neua can be a big gamble. And sure enough the day of our flight Sam Neua was fogged in and our flight was canceled, and since the next flight wasn't for four days and we would be flying back to the states it looked like we would miss out on going to Sam Neua. But as we were getting our money paid back one of the pilots decided he wanted to try to fly the next day (maybe there was something he needed to get in Sam Neua?) and so we came back the next morning and as the weather cleared we were able to fly up for a one day, one night whirlwind visit. After arriving in Sam Neua the van and driver we arranged to drive us to Muang Vaen picked us up at the airport, and we went and checked in our guest house, had a quick lunch and the headed off for the two and one half hour drive to Muang Vaen. When we arrived in Muang Vaen we met with the informal "leader" of the weavers' cooperative in Muang Vaen. In weaving villages, probably throughout Laos, there are different arrangements that women use to market their textiles. Sometimes they'll operate individually and market their textiles on their own, or sometimes they'll form formal or informal cooperatives where they'll work together to create marketable designs and sometimes they'll do contract weaving for someone else. In Muang Vaen the women tend to cooperate in marketing and selling their textiles. Since they're off the beaten path not a lot of people come by their village the weavers share the responsibility of traveling to Sam Neua, Luang Prabang or Vientiane (two days trip by bus) to try to sell the textiles they weave. Anyways, we showed our main contact the textile we had purchased a year ago and asked who wove this particular textile and could we place an order for maybe 20 textiles of a similar design. She took us to the home of the weaver you can see in the photo below on the right. I love this photo because it shows three generations of weavers. It's amazing how young girls, starting at six or seven years old will begin to weave small squares with simple designs and gradually weave more and more complex designs like the one the eleven year old girl is wearing which she wove and we purchased! And you can see a photo of the young girl weaving below this photo with her mother weaving at another loom behind her.   The mother is very shy and when we've come to Muang Vaen before and women gather to show us their textiles in one of the houses, she hasn't come but has given her textiles to another woman to bring, and that's how we discovered this textile but hadn't yet met her. We talked to the ladies and worked out an arrangement for them to share the weaving of the silk scarves for our order and that the design would include the same alternating rows of nagas and birds in a variety of colors, of course only using natural dyes. It's always very exciting for us to place an "order" like this, because it's done on a much more informal basis than one might think and since Muang Vaen is so remote with no phone access (cell or otherwise) it's not like we could check up on them. What will we see when we return??? So, it was with great excitement when we arrived in Sam Neua last month that our main contact from Muang Vaen actually met us in Sam Neua to show us the silk scarves and they are gorgeous! The women in Muang Vaen are masters in their use of color, which we think is magical, and since they only use natural dyes, the colors aren't bright or garish, they're perfect. Needless to say we were extremely pleased and we've taken a photo of three of the silk scarves you can see below and some closeups of the naga and bird motifs follow. We will put these on our website probably in a month or so and we'll put a post in our blog when we add them to our site. Something to look forward too!   
by: Laos Essential Artistry 
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