Jim Thompson was an American in love with Thai silk. He is credited with revitalising a dying industry. He lived in Bangkok for 22 years, started his Thai Silk Company, and strangely enough disappeared on an afternoon walk in 1967 in Cambodia, where despite an extensive search -- not a trace of him, his body or anything related to him at all was ever found. His house is now a museum in Bangkok. And boy is it cool. He was a student architecture before joining the army and before moving to Thailand. Thus, when it came time for him to b his home, he bought houses from all over Thailand (6 in total) and had them brought to Bangkok and assembled as one house.
His eye for design and antiquities is demonstrated throughout the grounds. There is also a lovely garden, which he called a jungle in a letter to his sister. I can say that not one detail was overlooked and despite a small issue as the lack of air conditioning (! Ha!) it was a house I would move into today. Its just that cool. He did the most cool things -- like reversing the walls of the house, because Thai design puts all the carved wood on the outside and he wanted to see it when he was in the house!
This is the area underneath the house.
This is a close up on the teak panel used to dye the silks. Its actually Chinese in origin but liked that the pieces of the animals were removable thus allowing the dye to placed in many colours. It also has a ruler across the top for measuring the size of the fabrics.
The "jungle" garden facing the rice storage house.
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