Want to see all of the patterns?

view the portfolio

About Thai Patterns

Between the years 2485 and 2486 B.E. (1942-1943 A.D.), Chai Tiansilpachai (Title name: Phra Thewaphinimmit; 1888-1947 A.D.) created an authoritative book on Thai Patterns titled Samut tamra lai Thai (Book of Thai Patterns).  The original manuscript, included here, consisted of a series of hand-drawn pages.  In early versions of this book, the original pages were copied by holding them against photographic paper, exposing to sunlight, and then developing the “blue prints”.  Thus, many of the original hand-drawn pages have been damaged with blue tint in this copying process.  In approximately 1964, the director of art at Silpakorn University (Professor Sompop Pirom; Bangkok) was brought blue print copies of this book.  In honor of Phra Thewaphinimmit, he published in 1987, 2000 copies of the blue-print book (Kurusapa Publisher). In a later edition of this book the original artwork was redrawn and an introduction and table of contents, in both Thai and English, were added. 

Given the importance of this artwork in the preservation and classification of Thai patterns, which are used for both artistic and architectural work, we present here photographs of the original hand-drawn pages, along with copies of the Thai-English introduction and table of contents published in the later 1987 edition.

We hope that by providing the attached copy of the original manuscript freely and openly we will foster and support the spread of the beauty of Thai Pattern design.