Read the river before the figure
At Ban Na, in the eastern hills, the cloth does not begin with a picture of a serpent. It begins with a ground: indigo dipped until the silk holds the blue of late water. The first turquoise chok floats then set a rhythm, a river that makes the red crest legible.
That order matters. When I read a Tai Daeng head cloth beside a 1930s weaving record, the hooked figures felt less like decoration than witnesses: ancestors, birds, and elephants held in a diamond lattice. The maker’s hand is visible in each slight stagger, where a picked weft refuses perfect symmetry.