Jim Thompson House

The Jim Thompson House preserves Bangkok's most seductive domestic interior: six antique teak houses gathered from across Thailand - the oldest sections dating to the early 19th century - and reassembled in 1959 on a canal-side garden plot by the American silk entrepreneur who founded the Thai Silk Company in 1948 and rebuilt Thai silk into a world name. Thompson filled the stilted rooms with Southeast Asian art - Buddha images, Chinese export porcelain, Benjarong enamels - and lived among them until 1967, when he walked out for an afternoon stroll in Malaysia's Cameron Highlands and was never seen again; the unsolved disappearance shadows every tour told in the house. The compound survives as a museum visited by guided tour only, its lush garden a green pocket among Siam's malls and towers, its silk shop continuing the brand. It is an hour or two of architecture, collection mystery in the city's centre.

Background

The Jim Thompson House is a museum in Bangkok holding the art collection of James Harrison Wilson Thompson, the American businessman and architect who designed it as his home. After moving to Bangkok and founding the Thai Silk Company in 1948, Thompson became a major collector of Southeast Asian art, including Buddhist statues, Thai paintings and Chinese porcelain. Built in 1959 on one rai of land, the house stands on the Saen Saep canal opposite Bangkrua, where his weavers then worked. Its six traditional Thai-style houses are mainly wooden. The largest, a weaver's house from Bangkrua, now serves as the living room, while most of the others are 19th-century houses brought from Ayutthaya. After his disappearance in Malaysia in 1967, the James H. W. Thompson Foundation took it over.

Source: Wikipedia, "Jim Thompson House"

What's there

• The teak ensemble - six antique houses joined into one home.
• The art collection - Buddha images, porcelain and Benjarong enamels.
• The jungle garden - the green courtyard beside the canal.
• The silk story - the trade Thompson rebuilt, told room by room.

When to go

Year-round and largely indoors - a natural refuge from rain or midday heat. Morning tours run quieter; the garden is gentlest in the cool season.

What to expect

Entry is by scheduled guided tour - no free wandering - and photography inside the houses is restricted. The visit is compact at an hour or two, and the beautiful shop prices its silk accordingly.

Nearby

The BACC arts centre, Siam's malls and the canal-boat piers.

Key facts