Art-craft Brass of Ban Pa-Ao: Conservation and Development for are Advance in Community’s Crafts Wisdom

Abstract

The purposes of this study were: 1) to study, analyse and synthesize the styles, materials, techniques and processes of brass art-crafts of Ban Pa-Ao, 2) to conserve traditional wisdom and develop brass art-crafts of Ban Pa-Ao and 3) to design the prototype products by studying and analyzing the styles, materials, techniques and processes of brass art-crafts of Ban Pa-Ao, Ubonratchathani Province. The research revealed the following results: 1. Styles. There were two styles of brass art-crafts of Ban Pa-Ao as follows; 1) Traditional style. This style consisted of handicraft such as, small bells, and a set of betel nut caskets. 2) Modern Style. This style consisted of handicraft such as vases, ox-carts of dummy, and bracelets. 2. Materials. The materials used to make brass handicraft of Ban Pa-Ao by the traditional processes of lost-wax casting were alloys. There were 2 kinds of them. 1) These alloys were the mixture of different metals such as the alloys with the combination of copper and zinc, and the alloys with the mixture of tin, aluminum and lead. 2) As for the materials, equipment and tools used to make brass handicraft by the traditional lost-wax casting processes, there were 10 kinds of the them. All of these were traditional materials and tools which could be found locally. 3. Techniques and processes of brass art-crafts of Ban Pa-Ao. The research found that there were 18 steps and each step had to be done by skilled workmanship.
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4. The conservation of brass handicraft wisdom of Ban Pa-Ao. The traditional styles and decorative patterns of brass handicraft were conserved as well as techniques and processes of lost-wax casting which were considered as the traditional wisdom were also well conserved. 5. The development of brass handicrafts of Ban Pa-Ao. Three parts of experiments were carried out to get the best alloys for making brass handicrafts as follows; Part 1. Experiment to find out the most appropriate combination of metal to produce brass handicraft the experiment in this part resulted in the most proper combination for brass of Ban Pa-Ao. Part 2. The experiment to find out the proper combination of metals for brass. The experiment in this step found out the most appropriate combination of brass to produce decorative handicrafts, utensils, ornaments and relief sculptures. Part 3. The experiment to design a variety of decorative patterns of brass handicrafts. The experiment found out 5 methods of making decorative designs which consisted of metal plating, acidifying, drilling, carving and painting. 6. The creation of brass art-crafts. There were 4 styles of prototype products of brass handicraft as follows; 1) decorative handicraft 2) utensils 3) ornaments and 4) relief sculptures.