Thai Celadon

Thai celadon starts with the Sangkhalok kilns of Si Satchanalai and Sukhothai, which from around the fourteenth century turned out green-glazed stoneware that travelled by ship across Southeast Asia and still turns up in wreck cargoes. The kiln mounds at Ban Ko Noi have been excavated and roofed, with a small museum showing wasters and stacking rings left where they fell. The craft then went quiet for centuries and was rebuilt in the twentieth around Chiang Mai, where workshops now throw, glaze and fire the same jade green with its deliberate crackle. The colour comes from iron in a reduction firing, and the crazing is glaze and body shrinking at different rates.

What you'll find

• The Ban Ko Noi kilns - excavated mounds with wasters left in place.
• The reduction firing - the iron glaze that turns green without oxygen.
• The crackle - crazing built in deliberately rather than treated as a fault.
• The Chiang Mai workshops - throwing, dipping and stacking, open to watch.

When to go

Workshops near Chiang Mai keep normal business hours and are quietest on weekday mornings, when the wheels and glaze lines are running rather than idle. The kiln site at Si Satchanalai is a separate trip in the lower north, best in the cool months since the excavation sheds are open-sided and hot by midday.

Practical notes

Most Chiang Mai workshops are showrooms first and demonstrations second, and the throwing you watch may be one potter kept on for visitors. Genuine antique Sangkhalok is expensive and widely faked, so treat market pieces as decoration rather than investment. The kiln site itself is modest, and shipping heavy stoneware home costs more than the pots.

Nearby

The San Kamphaeng craft road runs past the workshops; the Sukhothai parks sit near the old kilns.