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A Short Biography |
LAO COTTON PROCESSING TOOLSFor Lao in the remote villages, the weaving process begins with growing cotton or silk worms. A central part of the Lao section of the exhibit, "Threads of Tradition: Textile Arts of Laos in California's Central Valley," was the display and demonstration of the use of cotton processing tools and the loom. Below are the tools and a brief explanation of the processes.
Step 1: After harvesting the cotton, the seeds are removed by using a wooden eiu, where the cotton is fed between two rollers by hand cranking. The seeds are too large to pass between the rollers and drop or are picked off. Seedless cotton collect in the pick basket in the photo above.
Step 2: The cleaned cotton is hand-rolled into cigar-shaped clumps and fed into the kin to make thread. Step 3: The thread is dyed and hung to dry. Seventy years ago, most weavers used natural dyes from material they gathered. Now most use purchased commercial dyes.
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Cotton processing tools in the photo are, starting from the bottom, the eiu, used to removing seeds from cotton; second from the bottom is the kin, used to spinning thread; the third and top tools are called pien, used for transferring thread to spools used on the loom. 
The cotton processing tools are made by the men in the family. On the left is a closeup of the wooden hand-carved gears of the eiu used to turn the rollers. 
Step 4: The dyed thread is spun onto a large wheel of the pien (tool on the right). Leanne Lienkham Mounvonkham, demonstrating in the photo, is a master Lao weaver who received a Master-Apprenticeship grant and played a major role in creating the Lao section of the "Threads of Tradition" exhibit.
Step 5: Finally, the thread is spun onto spools like the one with the pink thread or like the gray spool on the top of the tool.