The Altar Printed Lacquer Vanish: Guidelines for the Development of Buddhist Art Creative Economy

Abstract

The altar printed lacquer vanish such as a small pagoda for containing Buddha’s relics, a reproduced movable throne and a basement of reproduced Buddha’s image etc, is one of Buddhist art as a part of ten divisions of traditional Thai crafts. They are presently sold in religious supplies shops, with various and dowdy designs tending to decline selling amount. The research aimed to study present conditions, problems, needs, and product development guidelines on issues of figure, design, size, weight, material and price using a qualitative research approach. Target population groups adopted by purposive sampling were totally 63 persons containing 5 persons of knowledgeable group, 23 persons of practical group, and 35 persons of general interesting group. Research tools for collection data were observation forms of both participatory and non-participatory types, and interviewing forms of both structural and nonstructural types. The data analysis was conducted using descriptive analysis technique.
The research results were found that the present conditions of the altars are diversity without interesting because of dowdy designs which have not corresponding to customers’ need. The needs for the altars are adjustments of figure, design, size, weight, material including price to correspond the customers’ need. The development guidelines of a small pagoda for containing Buddha’s relics, a reproduced movable throne and a basement of reproduced Buddha’s image ought to develop figure and design as same of Thai architectures in The Grand Palace and The Royal Temples. The size development should be assigned by the most selling amount of the altar as criteria of size, weight, material and price. It was seen that using a compensated material such as resin can control the weight, reduce cost and production time, and consequently lower the overall price. Therefore the customers can easier make a decision to buy the products.
Conclusively, the development guidelines for the altars on figure and design should persist in Thai tradition architecture. Therefore, the products would be properly beautiful besides it would maintain Thai identity. Material application for the production is also important because it can compensate the old material which be less amount and more expensive. These aspects would be important guidelines to adopt precious culture and build the creative economy from various arts and cultures in future.