A couple of weeks ago, I participated in setting up a booth to show off Thai style fruit carvings. The purpose was to showcase Thai art culture at the Loy Krathong festival. The Loy Krathong festival is also known as the festival of lights.
My teacher Tammy Sterrit, who passed away recently, had in the past, been the one to organize this booth at the Thai Festivals. Tammy did A LOT during her lifetime to preserve and promote Thai culture. We, her students wanted to carry on Tammy’s tradition to honor her. Nujarin Whitman headed up the project. I carved and helped to set up as did a few others. The result was a gorgeous booth full of Thai style carvings. It was eye-popping riot of color that I’m pleased to share with you.
Here is our booth at the Loy Krathong Festival. The intention is the show the Thai art of fruit carving
Thai style fruit carvings booth organizer Nujarin Whitman, with Nita Gill and Tym Chaipanya
This is another section of our Thai style fruit carvings display that featured Nuj’s soap carvings, too.
One of the many arrangements with 3 types of melon. The filler flowers are a mixture of real flowers and flowers made of red and orange bell peppers. See below for close-ups of the melon carvings.
Close up look at cantaloupe carving by Nujarin Whiman
Close up look at a Thai style watermelon carving by Nita Gill. To see more of Nita’s carvings brought to the festival, click here.
Honeydew carving by Norita Stewart
This beautiful arrangement of Thai style carrot flower was created by Tym Chaipanya. See the photos below for some close-up views.
These carrot flowers were carved by Tym. This type of carrot flower can last weeks when stored properly in the refrigerator.
Here is a better look at Tym’s precisely detailed watermelon carving that was part of her carrot flower arrangement.
here is a closer look at Tym’s carved carrot rose.
In this arrangement of Thai style fruit carvings, the yellow melon was carved by Nujarin Whitman, the watermelon in the back and the bird were carved by Nita Gill and the watermelon on the left was carved by either Tom or Norita Stewart. the bird was carved from diakon and dyed yellow with food coloring. To see a close up of Nita’s watermelon, click here.
Another beautiful arrangement of Thai style fruit carvings by Nujarin Whitman. The honeydew in the back was a carved and used as a vase to hold the yellow and hot pink flowers. See the photo below.
The yellow arrow points out the carved honeydew vase.
Close up of another of Nuj’s carvings. She put a ton of work into this booth.
A closer look at another of Nuj’s precise and lovely thai style honeydew carvings.
This pretty Thai style cantaloupe sat on it’s own elephant pedestal.
This pretty cantaloupe was carved by 15 year old Kimberley Hernandez
Norita and Tom Stewart (shown in center) also helped Nuj and Nita to set up and man the Thai style fruit carvings display at the Loy Krathong festival.
In addition to Thai style fruit carvings, soap carvings were featured as well.
This part of the bpoth displayed some wonderful and colorful soaps carved by Nujarin. The basket of flowers on the right are all made from soap. I’ll give you a closer look at these in my next blog post.
Nujarin did an immense amount of work to organize and plan this booth. Tym Chaipanya, Norita and Tom Stewart, Mark Whitman, Kimberly Hernandez and I, contributed carvings and helped to assemble all the arrangements. Together, we created a booth that I like to think would make Tammy proud.
I hope that you have enjoyed seeing all of these truly lovely Thai style fruit carvings at the Loy Krathong Festival. If you want to see more Thai style carvings check out some of my past blog posts here.
If you would like to begin learning to carve beautiful Thai style carvings yourself, click the button below, or check out my lessons in my online shop. You may also sign up at the top right of this page to get a free lesson.
Nita,
Thank you very much for sharing these pictures. Where was the event, and is it celebrated yearly there? In the 70’s we had a Thai lady working with us, and she became very involved with my wife’s Girl Scouts. She taught them all about Loy Krathong, and we all celebrated it every year. Wonderful memories!
Jay
It was at the Thai Buddhist temple in Escondido, CA. It is celebrated every year with Thai food, Thai dancing and music performances, booths with items for sale and and more.
OMG!! SO BEAUTIFUL! You are all SO TALENTED!
How sweet of you Luann. Thank you from the whole team.