Technique : Round-relief wood carving
Creating process (in detail) :

1. Workpiece designing
   Sketch the design on paper. Specify posture, size and proportions of the work as needed. (Some workpieces are impromptu direct drawing on the wood).
2. Wood preparing
   Select wood for carving: the most popular wood for carving is teak for its tender and beautiful texture, weather resistant and pest-free. However, as teak wood is restricted, some less popular wood is replaced such as Mok wood, pine wood, cassia wood, and jackfruit wood. The wood used for carving must be flawless for the perfect final outcome. For this piece, cassia wood is selected. Firstly, cut the wood into square bar with a chainsaw into the desired size.
3. Design sketching on the wood
   Sketch the design with a chalk on the wood. Darken the sketching lines with black ink.
4. Wood carving
   Carve out the pattern outlined on the wood with chisel and hammer, starting from extracting the unwanted part and later fixing the details and patterns on the Elephant workpiece. The separated piece of wood is carved to be the Elephant’s tusks and attached with glue to the Elephant’s body. The most important part of carving this workpiece is the Elephant’s eyes; It truly requires a close observation at the real elephant to express the Elephant’s eye carving to life, with deep emotions and realistic sensations.
5. Skin painting
   Have ebony fruit and lime juice fermented. Then mix with black powder paint and paint on the surface of the workpiece to darken the Elephant’s skin. Leave it to dry. Then scrub the workpiece with brass brush until it looks dimensionally and naturally black and gray.
6. Coating the workpiece
   Coat the workpiece with coating spray.

Kru Petch Viriya, or renowned as Sla-Petch (Sla in the Northern of Thailand’s dialect means Lanna specialist), is passionate and profoundly bonding with Lanna style whose way of life is long-time spiritually engaged with “Elephant”. He undoubtably fancies for elephant wood carving by bringing the accumulated wisdom to further develop, practice, and enhance knowledge both scientifically and artistically from various elephant books until he is mindfully and spiritually embedded.  The elephant images are meticulously transformed into tangible elephant wood carving, where upon elephant way of living is vividly and uniquely illustrated. The elephant gestures and emotions are naturally imitated through the realistic elephant ratio ranged from a single elephant, a couple, a triple or a group of elephants. His workpieces are widely recognized as the highly skilled ‘Sla’ and the master artisan in elephant wood carving. He continues to develop the wood carving to be the work of Art that valuably transfers the harmoniously scientific and artistic story about local identity and culture while it reflects the deep bonding between ‘Elephants’ and Thai kingdom to the next generations. Later the local artisans in Hangdong district gathered to establish the wood carving group called “Ban Chang Nak” (meaning a home where live plentiful elephants), to further expand and create the wisdom of wood carving into the “elephant” craftworks.

Reference :

• Institute for the Promotion of Thai Arts and Crafts (Public Organization). 2022. The Handicraft Inheritor, The Handicraft Master,The National Master Artisan 2022. Bangkok.
• Institute for the Promotion of Thai Arts and Crafts. (Public Organization) n.d. “Mr. Petch Viriya”. www.sacit.or.th. Accessed July 2023, 2. https://www.sacit.or.th/th/detail/2021-11-26-11- 14-17.

Compiled by :

• We will Go Co., Ltd.
• - Knowledge Promotion and Dissemination Department Office, Handicraft Value Promotion Institute, Promotion of Thai Arts and Crafts (Public Organization)

Date of last data recording : 4 July 2023