This elegant handmade fish trap is featured in the Museum’s Spotlight Gallery, a room near the entrance dedicated to a single object. (See this link for a 360° view.). It was made in the village of Ban Pu Lu in northeastern Thailand. It was purchased for the Museum by Joyce White around 1980, when the Museum asked her while she was conducting her dissertation research in the nearby village of Ban Chiang to acquire objects of daily life for its ethnographic collection.
This sophisticated trap is the result of centuries of experience, not only with various fish species, but also with the ever-changing flows of water in the Mekong. The thin bamboo sticks lining the little doorway are designed to quiver in the water, a motion that attracts carp. The sharp points inside prevent the fish from leaving once inside, and the trapped fish can be harvested through the open top.
The latest issue of Expedition , the Museum’s journal, has a Forward by the editor, Quinn Russell Brown, describing what a personal connection his family had with these fish traps. His mother-in-law had escaped from war-torn Laos, and her house in the U.S. was filled with handmade Thai and Lao objects, including tiny replicas of these fish traps on key chains. These objects surrounded the family as they prayed in her house when she died. Read this moving article here.