Thailand’s ageing silversmiths and skilled craftsmen of nielloware will retire within five years and leave nothing to posterity, says Werasak Angsukomotkul, ower of Silver World Factory Ltd., Thailand’s largest handmade silverware manufacturer which employs 50 workers.

            “There will be very few qualified silversmiths then because the new generation of apprentices don’t want to spend the minimum four years on training and manufacturers can’t keep up with rising monthly production costs,” Werasak said in an interview. Without additional government support, there could remain only two entirely handmade silverware factories by 1985, he warned.

            Silver World Factory’s table accessories, photo frames, whiskey flasks and serviette holders are much sought after in West Germany, the Netherlands, Britain and Switzerland, Werasak said. “I don’t worry about our markets and the export figures. I worry about the future of this business.”

            No more than five shop house-factories of handmade silverware are in business today, producing customized table accessories and other silver products.

            Today’s shop owners, sons of immigrant Chinese silversmiths, are approaching their sixties, having imparted little or none of the fine skills taught them by their fathers to their Thai-born sons. They say that profession involves little advancement and unnecessary hardship.

            To slow the cottage industry’s decline, 40-year-old Werasak and his older friends who also are in the same business have formed the “Association of Thai Silver smiths and Niellosmiths” that they say could come under the Education Ministry, which they hope could help revive interest in silver crafts. These silversmiths already have backing from the Industry Ministry’s Department of Industrial Promotion.

            Apart from shortages of workers, high duties on imported supplies from sand-paper to polishing dust and hallmarking requirements for all export items exceeding 150 grams apiece pose additional difficulties, Werasak said.

            “Most of our sterling silver items easily exceed 150 grams, for which we feel the hallmarking regulation should be relaxed, of even lifted. So much of our silverware goes to Bangrak (the domestic market) which mainly caters to tourists and which narrows considerably the scope of our business,” said Werasak, who inherited the business from his father at the age of 24. “In creakingly, exports are going to have to support local sales.”

            The newly-formed Association of Thai Silversmiths and Niellosmiths has accused the Thai Niello & Silver Ware Association of fraud and lease majeste, saying members who belong to the latter are not legitimate silversmiths and have misrepresented the organization as a charitable body under Royal patronage, according to Werasak. In one receipt, the Thai Niello & Silver Ware Association gave its address as the Dept. of Industrial Promotion, which is untrue.