30 years later

A world away

In 1984, the year I was born, my grandfather traveled from the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains in eastern Tennessee to Chiang Mai, Thailand’s largest northern city, to learn from and mentor a young pottery business.

My grandfather, Douglas Ferguson, was an accomplished potter and had founded a well-regarded studio with his father-in-law in the tiny town of Pigeon Forge, Tennessee in 1946. The pottery’s claim to fame were its refined glazes capturing colors as varied as deep teals, chartreuse and burnt sienna. As a kid, I loved visiting during holidays and spinning on the potter’s wheel, all the while barely able to reach the foot pedal. I’m pretty sure I appear in hundreds of tourists’ vacation albums!

Granddad belonged to a nonprofit that partnered U.S.-based volunteer experts with businesses in the developing world. The International Executive Service Corps was founded by David Rockefeller and launched by President Lyndon Johnson in 1964 and is still active around the world.

The pottery in Chiang Mai, Siam Celadon, was founded in 1978 by Penpan Wangviwat, who still runs the business to this day. She is the creative director and lead artist and still maintains an active role in designing new products. In 1984, her business was 6 years old and they were looking on expanding and improving upon existing processes. She reached out to the IESC to find an international expert on pottery and contracted my grandfather for 3 months in the fall of that year.

Family history

Fast forward to last year when I set out planning my initial route, and I did some initial research into Thailand. I was thrilled when I found out the pottery shop was still in business and made plans to visit upon my arrival in the north of Thailand. A few weeks ago, on my visit to Chiang Mai, my dad and I took a 45 minute taxi ride out into the suburbs of the city to pay a visit to Siam Celadon.

As we walked in the door, I began looking around the expansive showroom and my dad walked up to the front desk. He explained that his son’s maternal grandfather had visited this very shop some three decades ago and was interested if anyone recalls him. The woman immediately said “Mr. Ferguson? Yes he was here.”

Unbeknownst to us, this kindly woman was owner and founder Mrs. Penpat Wangviwat herself. I hurried over and introduced myself and over the next 30 minutes we caught up on family details and what my granddad did during his time in the shop. She even had an employee fetch a framed copy of the same brochure I carried marking his service with IESC!

Mrs. Wangviwat had an employee gives us a private tour around the workshop and showroom and I was amazed at the breadth and variety of their work. The artisanship of their hand-painted pieces rivaled what I saw in museums in Bangkok.

Their namesake pottery, celadon, refers to a process that dyes the finished pieces a soft green hue. The procedure has been practiced for millennia dating back to the 1st century C.E. in China. The multi-step firing sees the pieces first heated to 800 degrees Celsius for many hours then dried to a leather-like consistency. This prepares the clay to take in the water-based glazes. Next the pieces are dipped or hand-painted with a wood ash-based glaze that appears dark brown or black while wet. And finally they are heated to 1300 degrees Celsius for 8 hours to produce the distinctive jade hue.

I was very moved to know that a relative of mine had made an impact halfway around the world over three decades ago and that I could still visit that very place and experience the effect he had there. I’d like to thank Penpat for taking the time out of her busy day to reflect and share with me. It has been a highlight of my time abroad.