Handmade Buddhist alms bowls

Ten years ago, the neighborhood of Rattanakosin, in Bangkok’s old quarter, resounded with the sounds of hammers hitting tin, but today the sounds are of tourists talking, dogs barking and children playing. While many monks are now using factory made bowls, artisans in the village still continue with an ancient tradition of making bowls for monks.

Pranee Sutdis is one of the local artisans who has been working on bowls for the last 58 years. "It used to be that every house did this all day, and you would wake up to endless 'ping, ping, ping.' Now, there are only a few, and it's not so noisy," she says.

In fact, the bowl making enclave is relying almost entirely on tourists in order to stay alive and every year, the community is shrinking. Rattanakosin is now known as Ban Baht, or the “House of Bowls. There are approximately 60 people working in the neighborhood, comprising of five families.

But the tradition of bowl making goes back for thousands of years and has deep spiritual significance. Bowls are central to monk’s daily practice of collecting alms and they also symbolize a monk’s first step on the road towards achieving complete spiritual enlightenment.

Sunee Serseeserm is 59 years old and has been making bowls for most of his life. His medium-sized bowls cost about 1,000 baht (USD $32). Bowls made by factories cost about 100 bhat, in contrast.

"If they have been monks for a long time, they know they need to buy a handmade bowl. In some temples, they don't accept factory-made ones," Sunee says.

Somsak Batchart is 51 and operates four stores in the neighborhood that have been in the family for generations. "My customers are Westerners, so I always have business," he says, smiling. "Sometimes I can't even get everything done on time, and as it's handmade, there's no way to speed up the process."