Sangkhalok ceramic wares () are a Thai glazed stoneware of the Sukhothai kingdom period. They carry traditional motifs and were fired at 1,150 to 1,280 °C, and the forms include pots, jars, teapots, spoons and figurines. The ancient kilns around Si Satchanalai district in Sukhothai province place the manufacture between the start of the Sukhothai period in 1238 and the end of the Ayutthaya kingdom in 1767.
History The age of Sangkhalok ware has been judged from wrecks and comparanda. It was found with Chinese green ware of the Yuan dynasty in the Rang Kwian wreck in the Gulf of Thailand, and has been compared with Chinese Ming wares found in the Philippines. Production is placed from the Sukhothai period onward and was expanded during the Ayutthaya period. It declined from the 17th century, as Chinese kilns returned to blue-and-white porcelain, which took the trade, and Ayutthaya could not meet the demand of the Western powers then influential in the region. Chusak Satienpattanodom puts the beginning earlier still, with an unglazed stoneware of the type usually called Mon ware, which he would name Chaliang ware, in the 10th or 11th century; glazed wares he dates to the 14th century at the latest. He attributes the sea trade to Ayutthaya rather than to Sukhothai, on the ground that every excavated wreck carrying the ware is of the 14th century or later. The largest of them held 10,287 pieces, about two-thirds from Si Satchanalai and most of the rest from the Mae Nam Noi kilns of Sing Buri. The ware reached Luzon, where it is found in burials at Santa Ana and Calatagan, and Japan, where it is called Sunkoroku and was used in the tea ceremony while Chinese wares were scarce. He makes the end of production Naresuan's removal of the northern towns' population in 1584, together with the return of Chinese wares to the market. Paul Bishop and colleagues found the decline of the industry at Ban Ko Noi apparently unrelated to the activity of the Yom. Vickery held that the old city's wealth came from ceramics rather than agriculture, and that the industry lasted at least until the 16th century. He took the kiln population to have been probably Mon. He derives from Mon the only two old ceramic terms preserved, su, a pit in the ground and so a kiln, and thuriang, from duria, "dish".
Leedom Lefferts and Louise Allison Cort place the Si Satchanalai kilns in a wider context of village stoneware production across mainland Southeast Asia. On their account the ordinary activity of the kilns serving a Tai mueang was the making of utilitarian jars for local and regional use, and the glazed decorated wares made at Si Satchanalai for export are exceptional rather than typical. They follow a hypothesis of Hiram Woodward's in attributing the change to Chinese merchant middlemen based in Ayutthaya, and argue that the prominence of Si Satchanalai has given a misleading impression of stoneware in the region as a whole.
Terminology The origin of the term Sangkhalok is uncertain. One derivation takes it from song kolok, "stove envelope". Another takes it from the Japanese Sunkoroku, which may in turn come from "Sawankhalok", a name used for Si Satchanalai. Michael Vickery suggested that sagalok was the original local name, related to Mon sakok, "pit kiln", and offered what he called two very speculative hypotheses for its second part. He reports Spinks's explanation of the name as a Chinese mispronunciation and Damrong's derivation of sang from the Song dynasty. He records sagalok on La Loubère's map of 1688 and on a Buddha image of the First Reign, and sunkoroku in Japan by the end of the 16th century at least. On his reading, the city was called Chaliang in the epigraphic period, sagalok meant "kiln", and Sawankhalok later replaced both as the official name. The name was at first limited to the Si Satchanalai area, where many kilns were founded, and to associated towns such as Ayutthaya. Kilns in northern Thailand, however, also produced many wares of the kind called Sangkhalok.
Feature The ware is a fine stoneware, typically glazed in the colour called khai ka (, literally "crow's egg"), a green olive, with ivory-coloured streaks. Green-glazed ware of this kind is called celadon, and occurs in several shades, such as olive green.
Category Sangkhalok ware is divided into types by technique of manufacture: Strong unglazed ware, decorated with motifs pressed from a mould and applied before firing, possibly the earliest technique and continued afterwards. Dark brown glazed ware, similar in character and colour to the brown glazed wares of Lopburi White glazed ware with motifs drawn in brown under the glaze, compared with Chinese Shu Jol ware White glazed ware with motifs drawn over the glaze in golden brown Strong unglazed half-stoneware, dipped in slip and painted with red motifs Green-glazed ware, or celadon, with designs incised into the surface before glazing and firing
Manufacturing
Location
The kilns lie mainly in Si Satchanalai district of Sukhothai province, an area once called the "Si Satchanalai kiln area" for the ancient kilns scattered through it. The field runs along both banks of the Yom at Ban Ko Noi and Ban Pa Yang over some five to six square kilometres, and Chusak counts not fewer than 200 kiln remains; Ban Pa Yang, 4 km from Ban Ko Noi, has only brick kilns above ground and is the later expansion. At both places the kilns relate to the present ground surface, and little flood sediment has built up around them, unlike the old city downstream. Bishop and colleagues note that canals linking the remnants of the Yom's abandoned channels, used for transport and irrigation, were perhaps dug while the industry operated.
Material The main material for manufacturing the Sangkhalok ware is clay from the local area around the kiln area, probably the alluvial deposit of the Yom River.
Molding The pots are shaped by skilled, well-trained craftsmen, chiefly by hand. Potters today mostly throw them on a wheel for symmetry, keeping the work wet to soften the clay and give a smooth surface. A cutting wire and a trowel are also used.
Coloring
Sangkhalok ware carries a set repertoire of motifs. Dishes and bowls usually show fish, flowers or wheels, and the fish is usually taken to be a black sharkminnow. The hand-drawn style is distinctive and matches the local artistic style. Colour is applied by dipping or brushing with a powdered pigment that sets to the desired colour when fired at a given temperature.
Firing The piece is fired to 1260°C in a low-oxygen environment in a type of kiln called Thu-riang (Thai: ทุเรียง).
Kilns and workshops Excavation has recorded the kiln fields in detail. Sixty-one kilns have been found beside the moat of Wat Phra Phai Luang at Sukhothai, eleven of cross-draft and fifty of up-draft type, with two clay-mixing basins. At Si Satchanalai 186 kilns have been recorded on the Yom, and one of the three types there, cut into the ground and lined with slabs, is found at Si Satchanalai but not at Sukhothai.
Two tubular kiln supports from Tao Thuriang carry Sukhothai letters read as thondu, probably a personal name. Potters' marks appear on disc supports, and three temples stand within the kiln field, which Thongchai Sako reads as at least two groups of potters with ritual places of their own. Architectural ceramics – white-glazed roof tile, antefix, finial, makara and lion – come from one kiln alone, numbered 14. Ornament of that kind is found in monasteries of the Sukhothai and Ayutthaya kingdoms but not abroad. The extra-large plate of 26 to 32 cm occurs in no shipwreck, while the plate of 21 to 24 cm does.
Gallery
References