All That Glitters..

(via Bangkok Post, Feb 7, 2008) Karnjana Karnjanatawe writes:

You will a lot more than rings and necklaces in the city’s longest established goldsmith’s shop

Shopping for gold is easier said than done when you’re in Yaowarat, Bangkok’s China Town. But it’s not the high prices that make you hesitate, it’s the stupefying extent of the choices available. Yaowarat, also known as Thanon Sai Thong (Gold Street) has more than 100 gold shops.

The oldest of them all is Tang Toh Kang on Mangkorn Road. But it is not just age or wealth of experience that distinguishes this goldsmith’s shop from its competitors. Here, gold jewelry and ornamnents are still made the old way—painstakingly, by hand. The shop also runs the only private museum in Bangkok dedicated to goldsmithing, a treasure trove of arcane tool, trinkets and collectibles from the late 19th century.

‘We’ve been in the business for more than 130 years,’ says Chaikit Tantikarn, the shop’s deputy manager, a member of the fourth generation of the Tang Toh Kang family. In his opinion, adherence to a strict code of ethical conduct plus training staff to put the customer first are the key factors in attracting, and retaining, clients.

‘Honesty is the best policy, one we’ve always followed,’ he says.

In this country the unit of weight for gold is the baht (not to be confused with our unit of currency). Gold jewelry sold in the Kingdom must be 96.5 percent pure; the standard for gold bars is even higher—99.99 percent. But if you buy a one-baht gold necklace, how can you be really sure that it contains exactly 15.16 grammes of 96.5 percent pure gold? Which is why in this line of business, perhaps more so than in many others, trust is such an important commodity.

One mark of a reputable goldsmith’s, Chaikit says, is an establishment that is always willing to buy back gold from a customer at the current market price. He compares it to a firm offering a life-time guarantee on its products.

The shop was opened during the reign of King Rama V by Chaikit’s great grandfather, a skilled goldsmith who fled war in his native China and emigrated to Siam in search of a better life. Initially, Tang Toh Kang was only able to find poorly paid work as a laborer but he saved every penny he could and was finally able to realize the dream of being his own boss.

The family patriarch started out employing four or fie goldsmiths, offering both ready-to-wear jewelry and made-to-order items. Their creativity and the quality of their work was such that the business rapidly expanded, eventually employed around artisans. In 1921 the family moved into a new, seven-storey building in Yaowarat; it was then the tallest structure in the area. That same year Tang Toh Kang was awarded a pair of wooden garuda statuettes by King Rama VI in token of his appreciation of the excellent service provided by the shop.

As the years passed, more and more goldsmiths opened businesses in the neighborhood, with machines gradually handling many of the tasks formerly done by skilled craftsmen. But Tang Toh Kang and his team continued to make all their jewelry in the tried and trusted way, a practice which is still followed to this day.

‘We believe in hand-made products,’ says Chaikit, ‘because the quality is so much better than anything you get by using factory machines.’

Although the number of people patronizing gold shops is not as high as it was even a couple of years back, there is still a steady demand. Customers tend to buy gold jewelry not so much to wear themselves but as gifts, especially in the period leading up to Chinese New Year, or as a form of savings. And with the price of gold constantly rising, many now purchase the precious metal for speculative purposes, treating it as another kind of investment, Chaikit says.

Today his shop only employs three in-house goldsmiths, the sons of artisans who previously worked for the family. All of them live on the premises. Now 80, Hungjua Sae-haeng came to Tang Toh Kang as an apprentice at the age of 16. ‘It was during World War II and I followed by father to work here. I learned how to make jewelry bit by bit until I liked the work so much that I decided to make it a career. I think of it as a labor of love,’ he says.

Hungjua, whom colleagues respectfully address as Ah-pae (uncle), was making an oval link chain comprised of scores of very small rings. Although he wears spectacles he has no need for a magnifying glass. ‘I’m used to it,’ he says with a smile.

His work space is an old wooden table which looks like a desk you might find in a primary school. On it is a lamp, tools and several plastic bottles containing chemicals. There’s a drawer for keeping gold dust and storing other equipment. His hands are gnarled and covered in liver-spots, but steady as a rock, with none of the trembling that often affects people of his age.

Ah-pae shares the workshop with two younger artisans. Arun Haemcharoenwong, who’s only 27; and Thawee Pitakratchatasak, 51. They’ve notched up 20 and 38 years of experience, respectively, in the art of jewelry making.

‘I came here to help my father, who’s now passed away, back when I was only a kid,’ Arun recalls. ‘I was around seven when I started working in the shop,’ he says as he wields the blowtorch used to heat up the gold wire and make it soft enough to manipulate.

Observing what the other workers were doing, and closely following orders, Arun says he slowly graduated to developing his own designs. ‘Arun’s work is very detailed. He’s a goldsmith who shows a lot of promise’ was the verdict of Rungradit Ritthiching, a sales assistant in the shop who sometimes doubles as a museum guide.

Once he has made the length of wire sufficiently malleable Arun inserts one end of it in a metal contraption which contains rows of holes of different sizes. He turns a gear wheel which slowly pulls the wire through, making it longer and thinner. Then he repeats the process, using another hole with a smaller diameter to get the wire to the desired size.

To make the individual links for the gold chain, the wire is carefully bent around a wooden rod, the size of the ring depending on the thickness of the wood, and then Arun cuts a short length off with an ordinary scissors. He threads this through a completed link. Next, he uses needle nose pliers to force the two ends together to form a ring, bonding the tips using a mixture of gold dust and a liquid called nam pra san thong. His final task is to file off any rough edges.

‘An oval link necklace can be made by one man in a day or less,’ volunteers his colleague, Thawee, adding that the smaller the diameter of the links, the longer the job takes.

Nowadays most goldsmiths use machinery for all but the most delicate steps in the jewelry-making process. Doing it all by hand requires a good deal of patience and ‘heart’, as Thawee puts it. The onerous nature of the work tends to discourage newcomers to the trade, he adds.

Although this type of jewelry takes a lot longer to make than the mass-produced stuff, the advantage is that unique pieces can be made to the customer’s exact specifications. Certainly, the showroom has many unusual items on display including statuettes of animals in the Chinese zodiac and of various Chinese deities, tea sets, antique purses and little boxes.

A visit to the fourth and sixth floors of the building reveals treasures of greater antiquity. ‘Our forebears loved collecting old objects from China,’Chaikit explains, ‘and a lot of these things were left behind when the family moved out some 20 years ago. When we did a big spring clean around five years back to prepare for a visit by Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn we discovered more than a thousand items tucked away on the upper floors.’

It was decided t convert two floors into a museum to house te collection. Among the items on display are sets of porcelain statuettes of Fu Lu Shou, the three Chinese deities that represent happiness, wealth and longevity. Here, too, are goldsmithing tools from the century before last, postcards, weighing scales made from wood plus various sizes and types of moulds, ring and belt buckle blocks.

If you wish to visit little repository of curios, phone first for permission. And to do the place justice, reckon on spending at least an hour there. So passionate are they about their craft that time tends to fly when you get taking to such knowledgeable gentlemen as these.

For more information call 02 224 2422, 02 622 8640/2 or 02 252 2898
www.tang-toh-kang.com