FOLLOWING IN HER FATHER’S FOOTSTEPS
Continuing our female leadership series, Life talked to Yupin Dhanabadeesakul, who has preserved traditional roosterpattern bowls, also known as cham kai, for decades. The bowl is one of the best-known products from Lampang
Born in Thailand to an immigrant Chinese father, Yupin Dhanabadeesakul remembers the time when her family lived hand to mouth. While she’s made it through the tough times and her family now owns a ceramic factory in Lampang that produces the iconic, widely used and much plagiarised rooster-pattern bowls, or cham kai, Yupin is haunted by two fears.
“I am still afraid of not having a job and not having enough food to eat. Whenever I think about the past, I want to cry,” said Yupin, 62.
Yupin is the oldest among five siblings. Her late father Simyu Sae-chin migrated from Guangdong to Thailand during the Chinese Civil War. He was a ceramic craftsman and worked in ceramic factories in Bangkok’s Thon Buri area and Chiang Mai before finding a site of kaolin, the main raw material for producing ceramics, in Ban Pang Kha in Chae Hom district in Lampang in 1955.
With a limited budget, he asked five brothers-in-arms who also migrated from China with him to co-found the Ruam Samakkhi factory in 1956. They started producing ceramic bowls painted with a colourful rooster pattern, the same design they made in their hometown in China.
“It was the first factory that produced handmade ceramic chicken pattern bowls in Lampang,” said Yupin.
More than half-a-century ago, white ceramics were used among well-to-do families and mainly produced by factories in Bangkok. Common people preferred to use cheaper options like white zinc bowls or grey stoneware instead.
Ruam Samakkhi factory gave local people another affordable choice. The business was smooth during the first couple of years, but later the factory was closed down because of fierce competition from much cheaper ceramic bowls from China and also because of ceramics with sticker patterns. Ruam Samakkhi factory was closed in 1964.
Simyu did not yet give up. He rented a plot of land from Wat Chongkham to build his humble house and to start his family ceramic factory in 1965. At that time Yupin was 11 years old and just finished primary school.
She had to give up her education to help her father and let her younger siblings go to school instead.
“We did not have much money,” she recalled. When she was young she remembered her mother had to divide a piece of meat for the five of them. The size of the each cut was as small as her thumb. She ate it with a full bowl of rice mixed with fish sauce and monosodium glutamate. The practice became her habit and continued until she was in her teens. The tough experience taught her to be diligent, work hard and be very careful in spending until now.
Since the family could not afford to hire any staff, she and her father were the only people producing thuai talai, small white ceramic bowls used for traditional Thai desserts.
She managed to save some money and wanted to continue her education. She could do so only after working hours. She started with basic skilled worker courses such as sewing, electronics and hairstyling. She later managed to finish secondary school through a non-formal education system. It was perhaps fate when a friend asked her to be company for taking an examination at Lampang Vocational College. She passed the test, but not her friend.
“I cried when I knew the result. It was a mixed feeling of glad and sad because I knew that my father would not allow me to study,” she said.
Refusing to give in, she tried in every way to persuade her father to agree. Studying accountancy was one way to convince her father that she could help improve his business. In fact, she had made up her mind that she wanted to turn her back on the laborious work in the ceramic factory and be a clerk in a bank or perhaps to fulfil her childhood dream of being a teacher.
“I wanted to wear beautiful dresses like my friends. Since I was young, I never wore those kind of clothes. My school uniform was made of old phasin [sarongs] of my mother.” But the dream was far from the reality. “My father often said that he wanted someone to continue his legacy. He said if we had lived in China, it would have been a son,” she said. She took her father’s words as a challenge. Since she knew the ceramic business from day one, it should not have been hard for a daughter to run the factory. Yupin started to handle some traditionally male-led responsibilities, such as making metal moulds, among other roles, until her father trusted her enough to manage the plant.
From the start, the Dhanabadeesakul company has produced small ceramic bowls for Thai desserts. About 30 years ago, the family noticed that there were no ceramic factories that produced chicken-pattern bowls in Lampang.
“They produced ceramic bowls with pattern stickers. My youngest brother Panasin who just graduated from Silpakorn University wanted to bring back the chicken-design bowls. We wanted to produce a traditional method like in the old time,” she said.
The original pattern is the image of a rooster, since Chinese people believe that the rooster is a “symbol of diligence”, she said. The colour of the rooster’s comb and body must be orange with black long tail feathers. It must have a shining eye and the legs must appear to be moving, as if the animal was alive.
Apart from the rooster, the ceramic bowls during her father’s time also had other natural settings such as green rice paddy, a banana tree and a peony, which is the national flower of China.
They decided to bring the pattern back to Lampang. At that time no one in the family knew how to draw the chicken pattern except Yupin since she saw her father and his staff do it when she was young. She even practised drawing the roosters by herself, but not with real expensive ceramic colours, she drew on the ground. The painting looks simple, however drawing it on a shining bowl is not so easy. Yupin practised drawing the rooster for a year until she was satisfied with the outcome.
To paint a bowl, she has three paint brushes in her right hand. Although she uses them one at a time, the other two brushes help give the right weight for her hand while painting. Holding three paint brushes also helps shorten the drawing time.
When the Dhanabadeesakul factory launched its handmade chicken-pattern bowls about 30 years ago, they became a hit. People liked the rooster design on a thick bowl, which proved more durable than ceramic bowls from China. The factory also got a large order from customers in Japan.
Yupin needed to recruit more artists. Out of 200 factory staff, only two female workers were qualified, one of whom has resigned. At present, she has two more artists who are still being trained in the intricate skill.
After the first year of success, other ceramic factories in Lampang began copying her design with slight variations, using forms such as standing or sitting roosters.
Yupin remains confident that the Dhanabadee chicken-pattern bowls are unique compared to the 300 other ceramic factories in Lampang.
“We are the only ceramic factory in Thailand that still applies the traditional overglaze painting technique while others use underglaze,” said Yupin.
The overglaze technique refers to the painting that is applied over a fire-glazed ceramic bowl and fired again at 750C. It helps the ceramic bowls’ durability and makes the colours appear more vibrant.
Dhanabadee chicken-pattern bowls must be painted using five colours. Orange for painting the roosters, light and dark shades of green for leaves and banana trees, gold-based purple — the most expensive colour — for painting peonies and black for drawing bold lines.
Rooster bowls from other factories, on the other hand, use an underglaze technique in which the painting is applied to the surface of the pottery before being glazed and fired. Their chicken-pattern bowls have a couple of colours including either a red or pink rooster with black feathers, green leaves or with a blue flower.
The prices of underglazed ceramic bowls are 50% cheaper than overglazed ceramic bowls. Dhanabadee ceramic bowls are considered premium products while the chicken-pattern bowls painted by Yupin are known as limited editions. Her work has been admired by collectors. Among them are well-known celebrities like Thongchai “Bird” McIntyre and Siriam Pakdeedumrongrit.
It was a coincidence that the cham kai shares the same logo of Lampang province — a white rooster. Because of this, the chicken-pattern bowls are regarded as iconic kitchenware from Lampang.
To show its leadership, the family decided to open the Dhanabadee Ceramic Museum in 2013. The museum tells the story of Simyu, who has been honoured as the pioneer in chicken-pattern bowl making in Lampang. A section in the museum shows how ceramic bowls were made and used in the past. Several exhibitions show the many sizes of chicken-pattern bowls ranging from the smallest bowl, which has the size of a grain of rice, to the largest bowl and most expensive bowls, emblazoned with a golden rooster. The museum also houses the first kiln built 51 years ago by Simyu.
The kiln is called tao mangkon (literarily means dragon-shaped oven) because of its long body. The now-defunct kiln is already registered as a national heritage site by the Fine Arts Department.
The museum also has workshops for visitors to paint ceramic bowls, dishes or coffee mugs. The workshops are popular among family and foreign visitors, especially those from China.
After almost half a century of highs and lows in the ceramic business, Yupin looks back with pride.
“I am very pleased with what I have done. Although I used to cry and wanted something better than what we had when I was young, I later learned that making ceramic bowls is the best job for me. The more I painted the roosters, the more I fell in love with them. I know I will keep doing it until my last effort,” she said.