Suite dreams are made of silken walls and homespun cotton bed linen at this suite in the Peninsula Hotel, Bangkok.
Derived from Pwo Karen hill-tribe baskets used to store pumpkin seeds, the design of this wicker wine holder from Sop Moei Arts, Chiang Mai, took nine months to perfect.
Certain basic tenets, however, remain unchanged. Thai style has always revered the natural and the supernatural; many of its expressions reflect both. A simple lotus, when folded and placed in a stem vase or grown in a glazed water jar, becomes both an exquisite floral decoration and an offering to Buddha. A path flickering with candles in tiny terracotta bowls (tien prateep) or a pool studded with floating candles are not only fabulously festive uses of fire but also forms of worship.
While not all of us can live in a rarefied wooden enclave on a Bangkok klong, a converted rice barn in the Chiang Mai mountains or an idyllic seaside retreat off Krabi, a rustic ambience can be achieved through the use of basic elements in the home. Natural fibres such as cotton, hemp, linen and silk and quick-growing, renewable resources such as mangowood, water hyacinth and bamboo are experiencing a renaissance, just as recycled pieces have gained new respectability. A feeling of sabai (well-being) is as close as your hand-hewn teak coffee-table or the stack of cinnamon sticks in the corner pot.
Just as the West has become wistful about its increasing removal from natural beauty, so too is it suffering from a lack of the spiritual solace which has always been central to Thai style. This may be as simple as lighting incense to evoke a meditative mood or as complex as appreciating a dinner-set design derived from ancient temple murals.
While a sense of fun (sanuk) is intrinsic to a culture which exults in the mystical and the magical, there is still a seriousness associated with honouring certain traditions. Most followers of Thai style, such as singer Elaine Paige who was in Phuket recently to source a Buddha image for her home, are aware of the need to treat such objects with respect (and not place them in the bedroom or bathroom, for example).
Another factor affecting Thai style is the fragility of the very handicrafts on which it relies. There is a feel-good factor in knowing that the purchase of a fruit basket shaped like a Pwo Karen rice-thresher, a jute mat woven by Narathiwat Muslims or a television cupboard consisting of old Buddhist scripture-chest panels contributes directly to the survival of its producers.
King Chulalongkorn, who ordered no less than 14 bencharong tea sets in different hues for each of his 77 children, might have been bemused by the minimalism of Emmanuelle Seigner's necklace. But his commitment to modernisation as a means of preserving Thai ways would surely have caused him to embrace the latest design accents in the ongoing dialogue between his nation and its global partners.
High life. Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired furniture is juxtaposed with a 19th-century, miniature architectural model for a temple. The 600-sq-m grand salon with its sweeping, 11 m-high teak ceiling is the second largest residential living room built in the last 100 years and designed by a major architect. The Johnson house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in the '30s is the largest.
Contemporary
Thai Interiors
An openness to overseas influences anchored to an age-old attention to detail defines the new direction in Thai-style homes. Whether it's the sublimely subtle suggestion of a series of exposed pillars in a living pavilion or the full-blown fantasy of a penthouse palace, Thai interiors merge modern lifestyle with master craftsmanship. Preciousness is passe. Chair covers, for example, are made of durable materials and rotated according to occasion, season and mood. Recycled wood and renewable resources are the rage, as old methods combine with old materials to create new forms. Thai style is not only attainable, it is sustainable.
Flanked by two rare illustrated manuscripts, an imposing spirit house, carved like a palace, underlines the formality of the huge dining-room. Gold Thai silk panels are a suitably rich backdrop for other artefacts from Kalimantan, Pakistan, India, Malaysia and China.
A House in Wood
Threefold desires to display a museum-standard collection of Asian art and antiques, conserve northern Thai architectural forms and entertain on a grand scale led to this warm, rich fusion of Eastern and Western styles.
The owner, an international banking consultant, commissioned US architect David De Long to design what is now his home for half of every year. De Long imposed a Frank Lloyd Wright linearity on the traditionally Thai series of linked pavilions raised on pillars (to maximise ventilation and avoid flooding and snakes). His brief was to incorporate as many traditional Thai architectural forms as possible. "The traditional forms are exceptionally beautiful and rarely used any more except in temples," the owner says. "My great fear is that they will be lost, which would be tragic indeed, as age-old design can be adapted to accommodate modern living. Much of any culture is expressed in architecture; to abandon traditional forms is to diminish one's culture."
In keeping with Buddhist custom, the predominantly teak house recalls the days when even royal palaces were built of wood, more durable building materials being reserved for religious structures. A triumph of proportions, the design boasts lofty ceilings and floor-to-ceiling windows which ensure that air-conditioning is kept to a minimum. Externally the vernacular prominent roof was left devoid of the usual buffalo-horn-shaped crests (galae) for a contemporary smoothness, while the interior is an admirable mix of modern and traditional Thai styles overlaid with a Wrightian rigidity.
Vestibules act as breathing spaces as well as display areas for artefacts. "Some of the crates I showed up with at airports around Asia left more than one of the check-in staff gasping," recalls the owner. In the living pavilion, an 1850s Mandalay gable and Cambodian standing Buddha complement furniture upholstered in Thai cotton designed by De Long. Another highlight of the owner's collection is a 19th-century, red and gold manuscript cabinet which combines both Lanna and Chinese styles-"a real museum piece". In the dining room are two early-19th-century illustrated Lanna manuscripts, probably the greatest treasure in the house. "It portrays the Lanna people as a fun-loving joyous tribe," says the owner. "The text is written in the Lanna script, which is now virtually dead."
One of the few air-conditioned rooms in the house, the library features a wood panel guarded by life-like 19th-century Burmese gong carriers which conceals the unsightly modern cooling apparatus. The Chinese-influenced teak desk made in Chiang Mai and custom-made leather chesterfield sofa signal a departure from the geometric designer furniture of the living and dining rooms.
Precious Mettle
It takes a certain audacity to live with lashings of lacquer. For the guest rooms of his northern-style home in Chiang Mai, Dusit Salakshana has put this age-old Thai decorative device to flamboyant use.
Gold and silver leaves respectively were applied to panels of wood on the walls of the Gold and Silver Rooms, lending them a lovely luminescence difficult to achieve by other methods. Reconstructed from old doors, the panels were first covered with a black lacquer base which took several weeks to dry properly. Even the door knobs were colour-matched in the painstaking process.
Lacquer adorns not only the wooden walls and cabinet in the Gold Room, but also the teakwood bed which shines a rich ebony. Canopied, cushioned and covered in homespun Thai cotton, the bed was