House on the Klong: Jim Thompson

The polished wood panels of a group of Thai style teak houses, facing the slow-moving waters of the Klong Maha Nag, shine brilliantly in the high-noon sun. Here was the home of Jim Thompson, the legendary American businessman who developed a thriving silk business in the years before he went missing in the jungles of the Cameron Highlands in Malaysia--a man whose flair for the tasteful and graceful led him to build a house in which objects of great value and beauty can still be seen displayed in appropriate surroundings. The collection includes a large number of pieces ranging from stone sculptures from the Khmer and Sukhothai periods to Chinese blue-and-white ceramics and the five-colored bencharong; to paintings in various media, some dating from the Ayutthaya period, some painted in the last decades. Other valuable objects include a selection of bronze pieces, some of which date back to the pre-Angkor period, gold votive plaques, and wooden sculptures. This book reviews the early years when Thompson was building his business and looking for a location for his new house; the reader is then introduced to the house and garden; and finally the art objects in the Jim Thompson collection are described in more detail.