GAME OF THRONES
Bruce Scott sits down with SUWAN KONGKHUNTHIAN, whose exquisite HANDCRAFTED CHAIRS have found favour with five-star hotels, ACCLAIMED fashion brands and fans of THAI FURNITURE design.
Thai chair designer Suwan Kongkhunthian on his works and inspiration第一把交椅
Suwan Kongkhunthian手工制作的椅子，深受五星级酒店、时装品牌的喜爱，也拥有一批热爱泰式家具设计的粉丝。
CAN A CHAIR BE CONSIDERED ART? Most people would agree, but that doesn’t mean they’ll always treat it as such. Earlier this year, Suwan Kongkhunthian was the featured artist in a Bangkok Design Week exhibition held at Bangkok’s ATT 19 gallery, where dozens of handcrafted chairs made by his company Yothaka were on display. Unfortunately, due to the onslaught of crowds, organisers had to put up signs asking people not to sit in them.
Imagine my elation when I met Kongkhunthian in person a month later at the Yothaka showroom on Rama IV Road, where all his chairs are ready for testing.
The real truth, I soon discovered, was that I had actually encountered his designs before. In Thailand, his chairs are found in many high-end hotels, including the Grande Centre Point Sukhumvit 55 in Bangkok, and Four Seasons Resort Koh Samui.
Across the globe, his pieces can be found in Italy – most notably at Fendi Casa, Roda and Cassina – as well as in locations as wide-ranging as Paris, Prague, Dubai, Kenya and even Siberia. It’s a success story that started back in the late 1980s when Yothaka became one of the first Thai companies to break into the international furniture market.
These days, the energetic 70-year-old managing and design director of Yothaka has an illustrious career to look back on, but furniture design was not even remotely his focus when, as a young man, Kongkhunthian moved from Chiang Mai to Bangkok to attend the Academy of Fine Arts, and later Silpakorn University.
“After I graduated, I went to Saudi Arabia for a year and a half. I worked as a foreman, translating architectural drawings for the skilled Thai workers that were building the King Faisal University in Hofuf. After that I went back to Thailand and worked for a company that supplied furniture to a Scandinavian brand,” he says.
During that time, he was commissioned to come up with a design for the Köln Furniture Fair, which ended up winning an award. But by the time the good news reached him, he had already resigned and was working in Singapore at his own interior design firm.
椅子是艺术品吗？很多人会说是，但不是所有的椅子都被当作艺术品。今年较早时候，Suwan Kongkhunthian是曼谷设计周在ATT 19艺廊举行的展览中的重点艺术家，展出了数〸张由他的公司Yothaka出品的手工椅子。遗憾的是，由于反应热烈、人潮汹涌，主办单位必须放出一个牌子，要求大家避免坐在椅子上。
一个月后，我在位于Rama IV Road的yothaka陈列室里见到Kongkhunthian本人。那里所有的椅子都可试坐，我无比兴奋。我很快就发现，原来自己之前已经接触过他的作品。泰国许多高端酒店里，都有他的椅子，包括曼谷素坤逸55号格兰德中心大酒店、苏梅岛四季酒店。
放眼全球，他的作品出现在意大利（最广为人知的是著名家具品牌店Fendi Casa、roda、cassina）以及许多其他地点，包括巴黎、布拉格、迪拜、肯尼亚，甚至西伯利亚。他的成功故事，始于1980年代末。当时，Yothaka成为泰国最早打入国际家具市场的品牌之一。
这名活力充沛的70岁Yothaka董事经理兼设计总监，一生事业辉煌。但回望来时路，家具设计并不是他的最大梦想。年轻的Kongkhunthian，当年从清迈来到曼谷进入艺术学院，之后毕业于泰国艺术大学。
他说：“毕业后我到沙地阿拉伯当了一年半的管工，为当时正在建造的沙特费萨尔国王大学的泰国技术工人，解读建筑图。之后我回到泰国，加入一家为北欧品牌提供家具的公司。”
那时候，他受委设计作品，参加科隆家具展。结果得奖了。然而当好消息传来得时候，他已经离职飞往新加坡，在自己的室内设计公司工作。
离开泰国11年后，他受老同学M.L. Pavinee Santisiri的召唤回到家乡。当时老友正在进行一个公益项目，鼓励弱势群体利用水葫芦制作家具。这是一种水生漂浮植物，浮于水面，根在水中，在泰国河道里大量生长。“他们是全世界第一个尝试这么做的组织。在这之前，泰国人用水葫芦喂猪或制作篮子。项目结束后，Pavinee鼓励我看看他们的作品。我说我很喜欢，很好看，然后她就叫我和她一起成立公司。”
Yothaka International在1989年正式成立，首开先河利用水葫芦制作设计师家具，面向高端客户。公司找到了泰国以外的市场，买家大多来自欧洲。当时公司大约95%的产品都外销，卖到近4 0个国家。
After 11 years outside of Thailand, he returned home at the behest of his friend and former classmate ML Pavinee Santisiri, who had been involved in a charity project to encourage underprivileged communities to make furniture from water hyacinth, a free-floating aquatic plant with submerged roots that grows in abundance in Thailand’s waterways. “They were the first group in the world to try this. Before, Thai people used water hyacinth to make baskets, and as food for pigs. After the project ended, Pavinee encouraged me to have a look at what they’d done. I said, ‘I like it very much, it’s so beautiful’, and so she asked me to set up a company with her.”
Yothaka International was officially launched in 1989, pioneering the use of water hyacinth to craft designer furnishings catering to an upscale clientele. The company found an eager market of buyers outside of Thailand, primarily in Europe. At that time about 95 per cent of their output was exported, to almost 40 different countries.
The water hyacinth stems are collected into bunches, and one bunch contains about 30m of the material. At the time of its peak production, Yothaka was using at least 20,000 bunches per month. “You have to choose water hyacinth from an area where the water is flowing. If it’s growing in still water, the stem will turn dark brown, whereas the stems from plants in moving water will turn gold,” Kongkhunthian explains.
From a design perspective, it didn’t take long for him to give the furniture – which was then and remains today primarily chairs – both a technique and an artistic style that was recognisable as his own. “People say I’m an Oriental designer. I love everything about this culture – not just Thai, but also Chinese, Arabian, Middle Eastern and so on. I love Oriental design and there’s always a spirit of Asia in my work.”
“We don’t have high-tech machines to produce furniture, but what we have is high skill,” he continues, adding that his factory in Pathum Thani employs 75 artisan craftsmen. “The raw materials are produced by machines, but in my factory we have only skilled labourers. And we have a teacher in the factory to train others. He’s worked with me for a very long time and he understands my language of design.”
Some of Kongkhunthian’s most identifiable chairs include: the Lunar, an intricately detailed piece in which the high and wide circular chairback envelops the sitter; the YZY, which is currently in use at the Louis Vuitton store at Iconsiam; and the Savannah, whose curly armrest supports resemble fiddlehead ferns, and whose arresting pattern design incorporates a distinct graphic art sensibility. “I wanted to make this chair like a
水葫芦枝干采集后捆起，每束含有大约30米的材料。高峰时期，Yothaka每个月都要使用2万束以上。kongkhunthian解释说：“采集时必须选择位于流动水域的植物。生长在静止的水中点话，枝干就会呈深褐色，而流水中的植物，枝干是金黄色的。”
从设计的角度来看，他很快就为家具（以椅子为主）找到独特的技术与具个人特色的艺术风格。“人们称我为东方设计师。我喜欢关于东方文化的一切，不只是泰国，也包括中国、阿拉伯、中东等等。我喜欢东方设计，作品中永远有一种亚洲精神。”
他接着说：“我们没有生产家具的高科技机器，但我们有高超的技艺。”他的工厂位于巴吞他尼府府，雇有75名工匠。“原材料用机器制作，但工厂只用技术人员，还有一名师傅负责培训其他员工。他跟着我工作了很长时间，了解我的设计语言。”
Kongkhunthian一些最具有辨识度的椅子包括：lunar，精致细腻的圆形椅背又宽又大，环抱椅子上的人；YZY，目前在Iconsiam的路易威登专店里使用；savannah，扶手上的卷曲设计有如蕨菜，迷人的花式设计结合了显著的平面艺术感。“我想把这张椅子设计成时尚品，玩转黑白，抢眼夺目。”
这款设计绝对拥有不少支持者，包括著名酒店设计师Bill Bensley，特别要求在他的柬埔寨最新酒店项目shinta Mani Wild使用这张椅子。“他看到的是黑白版，问我能不能把为他制作黄色和绿色版本。”
公司生产的椅子，除了设计优美，还附带永续元素，因此更讨人们喜爱。多数产品采用天然材质如水葫芦、竹条、柳条、木材和藤，但Kongkhunthian和他的团队也在一些作品中纳入对环境无害的合成纤维和其他元素。他说：“虽然不是全天然，但材质必须对环境无害。”他指着陈列室里的一张椅子，指出它的金属基座是铝，也是地球上对环境最无害的金属之一。“我们用聚丙烯制作一些椅子上的编织绳子，而仿造皮采用的塑料是聚乙烯。我们不使用PVC，因为有毒性。”
近几年来，Yothaka也扩大使用不同天然材质，如棉绳、黄梨纸（以长形粗糙的叶子纤维制作）以及lipao, 一种生长于泰国南部的藤蔓，直到近期还只供皇家使用。
“我想建立并提升公司形象，显示Yothaka是高素质品牌，工艺与产品都很优秀。选用lipao是因为我从出道以来就很喜欢它。但是当我说我想用它来制作家具时，大家都说：你疯了吗？一个lipao手提袋就要大约7万泰铢，有些还要价10万泰铢！”
我打断他，问一张lipao椅子的价格大约多少，他笑说：“可以买一辆二手车了。”当然，最重要的还是椅子要坐得舒服，否则失去了意义，而这正是Yothaka名声响亮背后的最大因素。“舒适度与设计有时候是平行的，很难两者兼得。但是只要你能够做到，就表示这个设计一定会成功。”
fashion item. I played with black and white. It’s very striking.”
This particular design has definitely found more than a few fans, including renowned hotel designer Bill Bensley, who specifically requested the Savannah chair for Shinta Mani Wild, his most recent hotel project in Cambodia. “He saw it in black and white, and said, ‘Can you change the colour for me to yellow and green?’”
Apart from his chairs’ beautiful design, there is a sustainability factor that makes this company’s furniture doubly attractive. Most of it is made using natural materials such as water hyacinth, cane, wicker, wood and rattan, but Kongkhunthian and his team also blend eco-sensitive synthetics and other elements into certain pieces. “Even though it’s not all natural, the material has to be environmentally friendly,” he says, pointing to a chair in the showroom and explaining that the metallic base is aluminum, which is among the most eco-friendly metals on the planet. “We use polypropylene to make the woven rope used on some chairs, and the plastic we use for the faux leather is polyethylene. We don’t use PVC though, it’s toxic.”
In recent years, Yothaka has also expanded its range of naturally sourced materials to include cotton rope, pineapple paper (parchment made from the plant’s long, tough leaf fibres) and lipao, a fern vine that grows in southern Thailand, which up until recently was reserved for royal use only.
“I wanted to build the image of the company to show that Yothaka is a high-quality brand, both in its workmanship and products. I chose lipao because I’ve loved it since I first started. But when I said I’m going to make lipao into furniture, everybody – even my partner – said, ‘Are you mad?’ One lipao handbag is about 70,000 baht (S$3,030) and some are 100,000!”
When I interrupted him to estimate a lipao chair’s cost, he says with a grin: “You could buy a second-hand car.” Of course, all this artistry is meaningless unless the chair itself is enjoyable to sit in, and that’s the underlying factor behind Yothaka’s fame. “Comfort and design sometimes exist in parallel. You can’t always get two in one. But if you can achieve that, it means that design will be successful.”
“I LOVE ORIENTAL DESIGN AND THERE’S ALWAYS A SPIRIT OF ASIA IN MY WORK.”