How it began
The ware was made at kilns around Si Satchanalai and Sukhothai on the Yom River. Wikipedia places manufacture from the start of the Sukhothai period in 1238, while one Thai study dates glazed wares to the 14th century at the latest, after earlier unglazed stoneware. Britannica says the ceramics were based on techniques borrowed from China. The historian Roxanna Brown wrote that Chinese potters may have settled in Sukhothai during the Yuan dynasty, and that local potters were linked to Chinese trade networks. Michael Vickery took the kiln population to have been probably Mon.
How it works
Sangkhalok is a fine stoneware made from local clay, probably alluvium of the Yom River, and fired at about 1,150 to 1,280 degrees Celsius in a low-oxygen kiln of a type called thuriang. The Si Satchanalai kilns made mostly celadon, a green-glazed ware with designs incised before glazing. The Sukhothai kilns made mostly ware painted in black under the glaze, often with a fish, flower or wheel. Iron, the black pigment, was plentiful locally, while cobalt for blue decoration was rare and costly.
How it spread
Thai ceramics began to be exported in quantity toward the end of the 14th century. One explanation is the Ming ban on private overseas trade ordered in 1371, which cut the supply of Chinese wares. Sangkhalok pieces have been recovered from shipwrecks such as the Turiang of about 1370 and the Royal Nanhai of about 1460. The ware reached burials on Luzon in the Philippines and Japan, where it was called sunkoroku and used in the tea ceremony.
What changed first
Britannica records that ceramics from Sukhothai and Sawankhalok became a major item of international trade. Excavation has recorded 186 kilns at Si Satchanalai and 61 beside a temple moat at Sukhothai. Vickery held that the old city's wealth came from ceramics more than from agriculture. The largest excavated wreck cargo held 10,287 pieces, about two-thirds of them from Si Satchanalai.
Where it stands today
Production declined as Chinese kilns regained the trade. One account ends it with King Naresuan's removal of the northern towns' population in 1584, and another with the Burmese invasion of the 1580s. Pieces are shown in museums, including the national museum of Malaysia. Craftsmen in Sukhothai still make and paint Sangkhalok ware, now mostly thrown on a wheel.
