Demonstration by Mav Lis, Blue Hmong Artisan
Tamarind Village
Chiang Mai, Thailand
Please join Mav Lis (Ma Lee), a masterful Blue Hmong seamstress, in a two-day event that animates the ‘Hmong Songs of Memory, Hmong Threads of Life’ exhibition at Tamarind Village in the heart of Chiang Mai City.
Throughout her life, Mav Lis had fashioned the full attire of members of her household and herself as they move through cycles of life, from infancy, childhood, adolescence, courtship, marriage, to funeral rites. This requires skill in all phases of cloth production: ginning, carding, rolling, spinning, winding, weaving, dyeing, and embroidering.
Ma Liv is also accomplished in the art of batik, a specialty of the Blue, Black, and Green Hmong, by creating a composition of elaborate indigo motifs of cultural significance to embellish her hemp skirts and baby carriers.
Through a long, complex series of steps, Mav Lis moves along the length of a white hemp panel in small sections, meticulously delineating a grid, a “blueprint,” of abstract and geometric patterns with a marker. She then traces these designs on the cloth by dipping hot liquid wax, kua tswm ciab (koua cheu chia), from fine copper tools, diav nrab tiab (dia dra tia). While it is customary for a woman to own three different batik tools, master craftswomen use up to ten different sized utensils, each with a specific width, function, and effect.
The skirt is then doused repeatedly in a cool, indigo solution that uses the paste as a starter until the cloth takes on the desired blue tone. Mav Lis may repeat this process over and over, each time having first added new wax motifs. What results, when the skirt has dried and all wax has been peeled off, is an elaborate constellation of intricate patterns in a spectrum of hues from white to various shades of blue, all set on a field of deep, dark indigo.
