Following the Silver Trail

High up in the mountains where the borders of Thailand, Myanmar and Laos converge there is an area known as “The Golden Triangle”. This area was once the centre of all opium poppy growing in the country, today, however, this illicit profession has long since been replaced by tourist villages who’s roads are flanked by countless small restaurants and vendor's souvenir stalls that run along the banks of the Mekong River.

The Mekong has become home to one of the most enjoyable and popular tourist pastimes in this region - the boat tour. Wooden long-tail boats are available for hire here, and cruising up the river and its tributaries allows visitors a glimpse of village life in the many riverside settlements of the Karen hill tribes.

These semi-nomadic people, famous for their silverwork, migrated from Tibet around the 12th century and it is said that there are approximately 400,000 Karen Hill Tribe people living in the hills of Northern Thailand, and another 7 million in Myanmar.

I was privileged enough to visit Mai Le, a village near the border with Myanmar where I watched artisans carefully handcraft designs from scratch, using only high-content silver (97%-99% pure). The Karen employ traditional methods and tooling skills which have been influenced by centuries of tribe culture and art and you can actually see evidence of each piece having been formed by the hands of the craftsman.

Typically, this type of jewellery is engraved with plants, flowers, animals, or geometric designs, symbolizing their direct connection & historical links to both the land and water.

Bali: The art of decorative silver-casting
The art of metalworking arrived in Indonesia in the Bronze Age from Southern Chinese and Southeast Asian areas. Graves discovered from this period have revealed gold and silver necklaces, hairpins, beads and rings.

By the beginning of the 16th century Bali became a sanctuary for Hindus forced out of an increasingly Islamized Java. As the Majapahit Empire crumbled, there was a huge influx into Bali of Javanese noblemen and craftsmen and Bali became one of the main centers of precious metal craft.

The metal-smiths of Bali have been making beads dating back to this period; historically, they used silver to make bowls and items for their temple offerings, and gradually used silver to replace gold for the actual jewellery.

Balinese artisans begin by "casting" a base bead, this means pouring liquid silver into a mold to create the base piece, which is then decorated by soldering additional pieces of silver onto it.

After the beads are finished, they are cleaned with a solution made from tamarind fruit, then dipped into an antiquing solution. This last step in the process fills the grooves with a dark color to create a contrast between the high and low parts of the bead resulting in the distinctive style of the Balinese bead.