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Benjamahd Khonchom

"My name is Benjamahd Khonchom and I am a jewelry designer. I was born October 15, 1966 in Phrae province - in Northern Thailand. We are a large and warm family and we all live in the same neighborhood. My father works in the Ministry of Agriculture and he wanted his children to follow the same career as his and to adhere to his ideals. But my brother and my sister did not mind in the least; my brother became a lawyer and my sister a nurse. My parents organized my life until I got married, and because I was the youngest child I always felt like having to comply with them. So when I graduated from Nareerut High School, although I wanted to study arts and design very much, I moved to study in Phrae Agricultural College and later studied business and agriculture from Mae Jo University in Chiang Mai Province. There my life took another shape - I felt freer and I had a fantastic time; I played sports and I went to rural areas, building schools for the hill tribes and teaching young kids. These activities really made me happy and I started to handle life very differently, particularly since I met Khun Kitti, a young man whom I flirted with....

"We went one day to visit Khun Kitti's family, who runs a small black spinel jewelry workshop at home in Kanchanaburee province. Black spinel, also known as pleonast, is the premier black gemstone. Extremely durable it is also commonly called in Thailand 'black sapphire.' I found their handicraft extraordinary and wished I could be such a jewelry artisan. In fact, seeing these artisans at work awoke old memories... when I was a little girl my mother collected jewelry, she would show them to me, teaching me how to wear them, how to choose colors, how to tell real stones from fake ones, etc. So I already had a liking for jewelry and stones, especially for black sapphire... I mean black spinel, because I was born on Saturday and the black spinel is the gemstone for people born on Saturdays. And as I said, I loved arts and design too; now that I think about it I am sure that black spinel jewelry was my destiny. Anyway, after graduation in 1989, I worked in various companies and also in the Ministry of Agriculture as a public relations person. But I really grew tired of agriculture; I did not like it but I also wished to please my father. I still kept in touch with Khun Kitti and often visited him and his parents at their workshop. I learned each time new steps of the jewelry making process and, more importantly, became gradually fond of Khun Kitti. So much that we married in 1997 and this marked a turning point not only in my life, but also in my career for I decided to become the jewelry artisan I dreamt to be. I have been designing and making jewelry ever since, following my own ideas, studying from books, artisans, my in-laws, etc.

"I like to have this relationship with Novica. By the way, do you know that black spinel is mainly found in one place in Thailand? Well it is in the Bor Ploy district of Kanchanaburee, which is where our workshop is situated. We work only with that gemstone, whereas other artisans in our neighborhood work with any kind of stones. That is probably why we are the black spinel jewelry experts. We make it by hand, with our love, and this craft is also like the glue that binds the family together. In the future I will craft black spinel jewelry to the best of my abilities because it is what I always dreamt to do, because I love it and because we are our own boss."