The Bangkok Dolls Museum – Thai culture and tradition in miniature

The Bangkok Dolls Museum
Thai culture and tradition in miniature

The Bangkok Dolls Museum in an obscure soi near Pratunam has a beautiful collection of hand-made dolls in traditional costumes made by a master doll maker.

The museum was started by Khunying Thongkorn Chanthawimol, who trained as a doll maker in the Ozawa Doll School, Tokyo Japan. Set up in 1956, the museum has a doll collection of more than 400 Thai hand-made dolls from local material.

The quality of the dolls in the Bangkok Dolls Museum is well known to doll collectors and connoisseurs the world over. Accolades include the first prize at the International Folklore Dolls Competition in Krakow, Poland in 1978.

Displays cover aspects of rural life in Thailand, the Khon dance drama, Thai hill tribes of northern Thailand, Thai traditional costumes from the Ayuthaya, Sukhothai and Bangkok eras.

There's also a section on dolls in traditional costumes from almost every country in the world: Austria, Belgium, China, Egypt, France, Greece, Hungary, India, Japan, Laos, Netherlands, Oman, Poland, Russia, South Korea, Turkey and the USA, to name a few.

Dolls are made with painstaking attention to details in costume designs and doll houses. The museum doesn't just display individual dolls but dolls in scenes depicting life in rural Thailand, farmers at home or at work in the fields.

The morning scene of life in a riverside village with monks passing in boats to collect alms and food vendors selling their wares in boats is one example. Others are of farmers working in the fields and rural folk from the various provinces participating in traditional folk dances during festivities.

An attractive display is that of the various hill tribes in their colorful traditional costumes going about lives in their villages.

The centerpiece of the dolls museum is the comprehensive doll collection of the various characters in the Khon dance drama based on the Ramakien.

The array of Khon dolls in the Ramakien, with the forces of good and the forces of evil deployed in battle, is an impressive display taking up an entire wall.

The miniature Khon masks are another fascinating example of the skills of the doll makers. If making the elaborate life-sized version is difficult enough, just imagine making the miniature.

The Bangkok Dolls Museum encapsulates invaluable aspects of Thai traditional life and culture as a legacy for generations to come.

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