The charm of rural living
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Pairoj Teeraprapa fills his shop, the Chonabod, with appealing handcrafts and rustic prints
Feeling creatively stagnant in his design career, Pairoj Teeraprapa set off in a fresh direction in 1994, opening a shop called Siam Ruay in Chatuchak Weekend Market where he could share his ideas with everyone interested in the arts. The little shop dealt in handmade cotton T-shirts, postcards and ceramic coffee mugs adorned with graphics inspired by the rural lifestyle.
Foreign tourists and young Thais loved the stuff, so much so that in 2010 Pairoj and some friends opened a proper store, the Chonabod, on Phra Arthit Road, with more-fashionable gear as well as home decor. The focus remains on simple ways and crafting by hand. The wares have an old-fashioned appeal with their natural materials and earth tones.
“The Chonabod’s products reflect the charm of the rural life, where people might be old-fashioned but they’re extremely sincere,” says Pairoj. “Our products are really diverse, but the friends and other people upcountry who make them adhere to that same theme.”
The Chonabod moved last year to a small shophouse on Samsen Soi 3, a vintage-style boutique behind a yellow door full of creamy cotton-shirts, aprons, notebooks, brooches, calendars and more of those handmade postcards and ceramic mugs that Pairoj originally designed.
Now they bear prints of maps, elephants, the Thai alphabet and numbers, matchbox labels, muay thai and a female hawker in traditional attire. They heave messages like “Khon Thai” and “I Love Baan Nok”.
The “saving calendars” are interesting – each date has a hole punched in it that you plug with a coin so you’re saving up for the future.
There’s a collection of colourful shopping bags, totes, shoulder and cosmetics bags and coin purses made from somebody’s old flower-print skirts and pha kao ma.
In the Phoomdin corner are wooden mobiles, animal toys, fabric dolls and embroidered cotton bags. Another area stocks Bohemian-style cotton skirts, shirts, vests, hats and scarves. And in the DIY corner you can silkscreen your own design on a T-shirt in about 20 minutes.
“Everything is handmade,” Pairoj stresses. “I want to reflect the simple life and Thai culture through new media.”
SIMPLE WAYS
<< The Chonabod is at 131 Samsen Soi 3 and open daily from 1 to 9pm.
<< Find out more at (081) 829 7966 and “rojsiamruay” on Facebook.
