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Wannapha Nopnorb

“My name is Wannapha Nopnorb and my nickname is Phueng. I am an only child, born on the 14th of July 1979 in Bangkok. I completed primary school in the Ayudhaya province and followed my mother to Chiang Mai where I could study at Wattanothai Payap High school. My mother has always loved handicraft and as far as I can remember she always talked about our rich Thai handicraft heritage. That is also why I have always been interested in arts and design. My mother set up a ceramic workshop along with some Japanese friends, but eight years later they returned to Japan. She relocated and downsized the studio to its current location, in a district which has been the focal point of Northern ceramic kilns for hundreds of years.

“For years, she painstakingly learned from skilled artisans and taught me all her techniques. She would teach me what she had learnt and I became quite capable with ceramic painting. My mother decided to open up a shop that we would manage together. Being 15 years old at the time, I had other centers of interest and merely gave her a little help. But by the time I enrolled at Chiang Mai University (Faculty of Science Department), I showed a real interest in that ceramic craft of ours and decided that I would definitely help my mother. So ever since, after my courses, I would go in the evening to our little workshop and study from the master artisans how to make ceramic, how to paint and how to fire it. I spent many years, many hours, and made many mistakes before being able to craft beautiful ceramic. I love my ceramic job so much that in the evening, if I do not have any homework, I hurry back to the workshop and work from six to about midnight.

“I love learning from the five ceramic experts who work with my mother, they are always pleased to answer my questions and always here to humbly perfect my techniques. My mother and I mostly draw our inspiration from books and manuscripts. I started by learning basic painting, such as filling the patterns with color, and slowly learned the difficult drawing of the patterns themselves. I use particular leaves to make the green or blue colors. I can now flawlessly paint the traditional pattern, and I have even been using my own ideas to create innovating ones. The most difficult thing for me is still to fire the ceramics in our two kilns. Because although we perfectly control the temperature and the pressure, we never know how the piece is going to come out of the kiln. Cracks or undesirable color variations oblige us to remake the piece. This final stage takes time to master; fortunately I am backed up by my loving mother and incredibly skilled artisans.

“I think it is a great opportunity to work with the famous Internet Company that is Novica. We can now present our craft to the world. I want to tell the customer that our ceramics are handmade; hence defects occur at every stage of the making process. But we use all our knowledge to do the best. We sometimes have to fire many pieces before being able to present you with a single one. So, if you buy some of our products I hope you will not regret it and more importantly, that you will love it as much as we do.”