Monk’s Bowl Village (Ban Baat)

Ban Baat is the only remaining village of three established in Bangkok by Rama I for the purpose of handcrafting bàht (monk’s bowls), the ceremonial bowls used to collect alms from the faithful each morning. As cheaper factory-made bowls are now the norm, the artisanal tradition has shrunk to about half a dozen families. You can usually observe the process of hammering the bowls together from eight separate pieces of steel, said to represent Buddhism’s Eightfold Path. The joints are then fused with melted copper wire, and the bowl is beaten, polished and (usually) coated with several layers of black lacquer. A typical bàht-smith’s output is one large bowl per day; more for smaller bowls.