Ko Kret Pottery Island

Today we managed to get to the island of Ko Kret in the middle of the Chao Priya River. This is a island of Mon (Mung?) people who have used the earth of the island, at least initially, to make large water storage pots. Today, the island is organized into three pottery villages with obviously a successful orientation towards exporting with weekend tourists a side business. We were here in the middle of the week, middle of the hot as hell and humid day, so we had it pretty much to ourselves. The kiln above right, was forty feet long and a slight climb to the chambers. Lots of firewood stacked out back.
Above left, a photo of the front of one of the many kilns on this island. These potteries do a lot of low fire pierced ware with lots of imprint stamps for surface decoration. At one point we bought home made coconut ice cream served up in a leaf folded into a cup and placed inside one of the low fire pots... all for 66 cents... and you keep the pot! We'll see if I can get it home in one piece.

These next two shots were taken by leaning inside the dark kiln, aiming in each direction both up and down the dark kiln chamber and seeing what the dark insides would reveal. I had no idea that there were pots inside awaiting unloading.
Another shot of 'lotsapots' awaiting firing. There were also massive brand new gas fired car kilns which had to cost a fortune... so I'm guessing the economy on this island is doing quite well... certainly a lot of shops selling wares and trinkets.

Thursday is our day to move out, stash our bags and do one of the yet undone museums here in Bangkok while we await our 6 pm departure on the overnight train down the Thai peninsula to Tran (the train to Tran) arriving at 10 am and then immediately either going out to an island or finding a nice beachside place on the mainland. Students are newly out of school for summer vacation so the trains were booked... hence we only could get upper births with fans (instead of the usual a.c.) so this could be a very hot overnight trip... hope not. Usually the Thai trains are very comfortable and nice.

These next couple of shots show the tradition going forward and some of the exquisite sculptural pieces being done on the island.





F, a Next, a close up of some of the piecing tradition here. These are largish casserole size pots. Finally, a tranquil pond sitting right behind one of the new kilns... if you turn around from loading... this is your view of the world around you. I also have some fine shots of the wheels and the belt driven drives for speed variation. I look forward to arranging these into a slide show for people to view upon my return. Our trip home was quite an adventure. We took the same #32 bus after the water taxi up the Chao Priya river only to find that sinking feeling that nothing on the return trip is familiar... yes, an hour of rush hour fumes later, we found we had taken the bus all the way back to our neighborhood. In retro... could have been a lot worse. I may be out of internet touch for a couple of days... so don't be alarmed. Until then... Mark