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TEXTILE COLLECTION

Textile Collection

The Tilleke & Gibbins Textile Collection houses over 2,000 museum-quality textiles, representing both majority and minority ethnic groups in Southeast Asia, as part of our commitment to preserve and honor the cultures in which we are proud to live and work.

For inquiries regarding our textile collection, please contact

Wipawee Tiyawes

Overview

We maintain a diverse collection of textiles to represent Southeast Asia’s rich cultures, and open them to the public to educate people on this ancient and beautiful art form.

The mission of our textile collection is to collect, display, and preserve the textiles, in proximity to the geographical area in which they were created. Fabrics from various ethnic groups constituting Thailand’s diverse peoples form the foundation of the collection, supplemented by textiles from neighboring countries, including Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, and Vietnam—plus some Indian and southern Chinese pieces for comparative study.

Originally starting with just 50 pieces, the wide selection of clothing types, ceremonial items, and domestic accessories now forms one of the largest collections of its kind in the world. Pieces from the collection are permanently on display in Tilleke & Gibbins’ Bangkok office, and we are also proud to regularly loan pieces to both local and international exhibitions. They can also be viewed by individual scholars and are available for educational events such as lectures and special activities.

Our textile storage room adheres to international museum standards for handling and maintaining a textile collection. It is windowless to prevent sunlight damage to the textiles, and is instead illuminated by LED lighting. Temperature and humidity are carefully controlled, and advanced air filtration and fire suppression systems are in place. It is also equipped with a special freezer (used to treat newly acquired pieces), storage trays that accommodate 20–30 textiles each, and materials such as acid-free tissue paper and Mylar, which are used for safely storing the textiles.

Tilleke & Gibbins’ Textile Collection

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History

Interior design ideas become a museum-quality collection.

The Textile Collection began in 1987, when David Lyman chose to decorate the firm’s previous offices at the Tilleke & Gibbins Building and Tonson Building with traditional Southeast Asian textiles. The further acquisition of 78 rare textiles of museum quality from northeastern Laos four years later changed the initial objective of using textiles as permanent office decoration to creating a collection of textiles to preserve culture and educate the public.

Tilleke & Gibbins’ Textile Collection is now one of the largest and most impressive in Thailand, containing over 2,000 museum-quality Southeast Asian textiles representing the diverse cultures of Southeast Asia. A number of pieces are exhibited on the walls of the firm’s head office in Bangkok, with the demonstration pieces rotating regularly to make the collection’s many treasures available to viewers. The collection today is an affirmation of Tilleke & Gibbins’ deep connection to and support for the culture of our home region.

RELATED ARTICLES

March 23, 2012
The Tilleke & Gibbins Textile Collection was featured in today’s edition of ASTV Newspaper, a local newspaper based in Bangkok. In an interview, Wipawee Tiyawes, Textile Curator, provided some key background information about the collection, including its 20-year history, the different regions that are represented in the collection, and specific details on the weaving methods for various textiles. One particular item highlighted in the article was a textile from the King Rama V period which, at over 100 years old, is the oldest textile in the collection.
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February 27, 2012
On March 29, Dr. Linda S. McIntosh, Consulting Curator of the Tilleke & Gibbins Textile Collection,  will presents a full morning program on natural dyes. Over three thousand recipes for natural dyes exist. The use of natural dyes has declined throughout the world, but much of the knowledge has been forgotten. Some groups continue to apply natural dyes to their textiles while others work to preserve the knowledge. A 1.5-hour video entitled, In Search of Lost Color: The Story of Natural Dyes, will be played in the program, and Dr.
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January 26, 2012
Chula kathin, a Buddhist festival also known as kathin laen, celebrates the end of Buddhist Lent and allows participants to earn merit through the offering of material for monks’ robes to the temple. Celebrated in villages throughout Thailand and neighboring countries in the past, this merit-making tradition used to be held annually, but over the years only a few communities continued to carry out this religious ceremony. In the last few decades, this rite has been revived in some areas.
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January 20, 2012
Dr. Linda S. McIntosh, consulting curator of the Tilleke & Gibbins Textile Collection, has planned a field excursion to broaden participants’ understanding of Tai Yuan textiles. This trip will take textile enthusiasts to the Mae Chaem Tiin Chok Festival of Chiang Mai Province, a festival named after the ceremonial skirt of the Tai Yuan. Textiles that have entered this year’s competition will be on display, along with demonstrations of weaving and other stages of textile production. Other traditional crafts will also be demonstrated, such as writing on palm leaf manuscripts.
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CASE STUDY

Experts from the Royal Textile Museum of Bhutan Visit Tilleke & Gibbins’ Textile Collection

On May 9, 2019, nine members of the exhibitions and installations team at the Royal Textile Museum of Bhutan visited the Tilleke & Gibbins Textile Collection as part of their itinerary to view Thailand’s notable textile and heritage collections. Wipawee Tiyawes, textile curator at Tilleke & Gibbins, first presented an overview of the collection, storage, maintenance, and display procedures, then led the group on a tour of the textile storage room and the textile wall displays on all seven floors of Tilleke & Gibbins’ office in Bangkok.

Thai Textile Society Newsletter Recounts Walk and Talk Event at Tilleke & Gibbins’ Textile Collection

The Thai Textile Society has published a an article recounting a recent "Curator's Walk and Talk" event, hosted by Tilleke & Gibbins' Bangkok office, in the Fall 2018 edition of its newsletter.

Tilleke & Gibbins Textile Collection – Curator’s Walk and Talk

Wipawee Tiyaws, curator of Tilleke & Gibbins' Textile Collection, will be giving a guided tour of exhibited pieces from the collection on Tuesday, April 24, in collaboration with the Thai Textile Society.

Art of Southeast Asian Textiles Featured in ANZWG’s In Touch Newsletter

ANZWG, the Australian New Zealand Women’s Group Bangkok, has played a major part in the lives of many expatriate women residing in Bangkok for more than 50 years. In response to interest among the organization’s members in textiles and related cultural activities, the February/March issue of In Touch, ANZWG’s member newsletter, includes a story on Art of Southeast Asian Textiles: The Tilleke & Gibbins Collection.

Tilleke & Gibbins Textile Collection Book Launch

Tilleke & Gibbins is proud to announce the publication of Art of Southeast Asian Textiles: The Tilleke & Gibbins Collection. Written by Dr. Linda S. McIntosh and published by Serindia Publications, this beautifully illustrated book highlights the museum-quality textiles that compose the Tilleke & Gibbins Textile Collection.