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Between
the roads to Kompong Cham and Kompong Chnang, not far from
Oudong in Kandal Province, the quiet of rural life gives way to
the tapping of metal on metal in a little village on the banks
of the Tonle Sap.
Between the roads to Kompong Cham and Kompong Chnang, not far
from Oudong in Kandal Province, the quiet of rural life gives
way to the tapping of metal on metal in a little village on the
banks of the Tonle Sap.
This Koh Chin Commune, Ponea Liu District, Prek Khdam, a village
of coppersmiths.
By
boat, bicycle and moto, kilos of scrap copper are brought to
this little village every week. On the other side of the river,
villages famous for silver flourish.
But
thirty years ago, when the price of silver went up and the
demand for silver products went down, the metalsmiths of Koh
Chin adapted their methods to this more ancient craft.
Although there are a few other Cambodian villages which make
arnaments from copper, this tiny place is the most famous.
"I
learnt to work with silver. When I was eight, I was doing simple
designs for fun. Small animals - that sort of thing."
"By
the time I was 12, I was part of the business. My whole family
do this. We do not farm or fish."
Keb
Lieb's story is the same as most from Koh Chin.
"During
the Sihanouk years of the sixties there was a lot of silver, A
lot of people could afford it. My mother would give me a kilo of
silver to make beautiful."
"But during after that, less people could afford it. And
after Pol Pot time, hen we came back to start our business
again, very few could, but people who wanted nice things for
their house could buy copper. Even if we could afford to buy
silver, no one could buy it from us, but copper sold well. WE
changed our business."
Despite the family's relative prosperity during her childhood,
Keb Lieb's education was mainly learning how to work metal and
carve the intricate patterns of the pieces the family's men
smelted and moulded.
"I
went away to school but I soon came back. I only needed to learn
to write basic Khmer for orders and math's to weigh metal and
work out prices.
"My
grandfather said, "a girl with an education has enough
knowledge to write letters to boyfriends'. I followed my mother
and her mother and learned only what I needed for the
business."
Copper was the first metal men learned to work with, probably
more than 10,000 year ago. It was almost certainly being used in
Cambodia during the Fuanan ear, as early as 400BC.
Nowadays
almost all of the copper the Khmer smiths use is not dug from
the ground but painstakingly stripped from old wire, duped
electrical equipment and other industrial debris.
From mainly Phnom Penh, were "ai-jai" or recycling
collectors sift through every item of rubbish and pay
householders for discarded treasure such as wire, scrap copper
is collected and begins its journey by any means possible to Koh
Chin, about 70 kolometres north of the capital.
Once
there, the village, which works like a co-operative, divides the
scrap up and begins to melt it down.
Every family knows where they are up the with supply. Some take
copper on credit, and will pay the smelting family when they
sell the finished pieces, Some are owed copper from the last
batch of sales to markets in Phnom Penh, Siem Reap or Thailand.
For
every four kilos, about one will be lost in the recycling
process as it is put through fire and rolled into massive copper
plates.
Each
family will take plates, then draw the outlines of whatever they
will turn it into onto them.
They
will cut out shapes, hammering the cut copper onto wooden
moulds, firing it, soldering and cleaning the joints.
The men craft the shape, the women chisel and carve the fine
patterns before it is fired a final time and cleaned using lemon
juice or the fruit of the ampoiul tree.
Keb
Lieb remembers when coppersmiths were rich.
"We
used to make $US600 a month - $100 more than teachers. Now,
maybe 100,00 riel per month, but I don't mind so much," she
says.
"Of
course I would like more money, but for a job, it is more like a
pastime. I love doing it."
Like
the nearby, more famous silver villages, Koh chin developed away
from farming when Oudong was the Cambodia capital for about two
centuries until 1866.
The
people say the king and his entourage would come to the Tonle
Sap to bathe, and villagers always wanted to give the king
beautiful gifts. They began to craft silver to offer him and
began a tradition.
When the capital moved to Phnom Penh, the smiths were still
close enough to supply their market via the same river or by
road.
Late,
the people of Koh Chin saw a gap in the market and turned to a
cheaper metal to survive.
But
copper takes no less skill or dedication
Villagers
like Keb Kunthea, 29, know it is their destiny.
"I
never went to school. From when I was very small, I learned
copper. When I was 15, I also started to learn to use brass,
which is harder and more expensive. I prefer copper," she
says.
"My village has the glory name for what we do. Sometimes I
have heard that the markets in Phnom Penh use our name when they
try to sell copper made by machine in Thailand. They say, 'this
is from Koh Chin. It is the best', and charge more, but we do
everything by had. Every line. These others are made in the
hundreds - not as good as our work."
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