Queen Sirikit Museum of Textiles

The Queen Sirikit Museum of Textiles occupies a building that was not built for it. It stands within the precincts of the Grand Palace in Bangkok, in Phra Nakhon district. Originally, the palace also housed the kingdom’s ministries. Only one ministry is still located within the precinct.¹

The museum building belongs to this generation of ministerial buildings. It stands in the outer court of the palace, along the north wall, between the Wisetchaisri Gate and the Wimanthewet Gate. The Wisetchaisri Gate is now the visitors’ entrance to the Grand Palace: passing through it, one finds the museum on the right.⁵

The building bears the Thai name Ho Ratsadakon Phiphat, rendered in English as the Ratsadakorn-bhibhathana Building. It was erected during the reign of King Chulalongkorn, fifth monarch of the Chakri dynasty, also known as Rama V. It is an administrative building of the late nineteenth century.⁸

The date of its construction is not agreed upon. Accounts differ: according to some, the building was constructed in 1870; according to others, it was established by Chulalongkorn on 4 June 1873.⁸

For many decades, the Ho Ratsadakon Phiphat housed the offices of the Ministry of Finance, in other words the Royal Treasury. By 2003, it stood vacant.⁹

Nothing in this administrative history destined it for fabrics and costumes. It was the work of a queen, pursued for decades beyond the palace walls among rural artisans, that would give it its present purpose.

Queen Sirikit (1932–2025), consort of King Bhumibol Adulyadej, founded the SUPPORT Foundation in 1976, an organisation intended to encourage the production of traditional Thai crafts.¹⁰

The museum’s curator, Alisa Saisavetvaree, traces the origin of this undertaking to a visit by the Queen to Na Wa district, in Nakhon Phanom province. There the Queen noticed the silk wrap-around skirts, lengths of cloth wound around the waist, worn by the local people. In her account, it was from this attention paid to an everyday garment that the ambition was born to support the weavers and to make their work known.³

In 2003, Queen Sirikit asked to use the former Finance building, then vacant, to house a textile museum. King Bhumibol Adulyadej granted her the building. The project thus brought together two legacies: that of a building constructed under Chulalongkorn, and that of the work the Queen had carried out among artisans since the creation of the SUPPORT Foundation.⁸

The museum describes itself as the gift of Queen Sirikit and the SUPPORT Foundation to the Thai people. It aims to preserve the Thai textile arts for future generations.¹⁰

To accommodate the museum, the interior of the building was entirely refurbished. Behind the nineteenth-century walls were installed a new entrance hall, exhibition galleries, storerooms designed for the conservation of fabrics, an education workshop, a specialist library and a lecture hall. The visitor route extends over two floors.⁹

The most significant facility is a conservation and restoration laboratory, that is, a workshop where objects are stabilised, cleaned and repaired to slow their deterioration. It is the first laboratory of its kind devoted to textiles in Thailand. Its creation shows that the project was not limited to display: conservation is also part of its mission.⁹

The Queen Sirikit Museum of Textiles opened its doors in 2012, the year of the Queen’s eightieth birthday. The official opening ceremony was presided over by Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn, then the museum’s principal adviser. The inauguration thus formed part of the celebrations for the Queen, whose work the museum carries forward.²

The first visitor route comprised four galleries. The first presented more than a dozen designer outfits worn by the Queen, cut from fabrics hand-woven by members of the SUPPORT Foundation. The second was devoted to the Thai national costumes created on the Queen’s initiative. The last two, through multimedia presentations, told the story of the SUPPORT Foundation’s work. From the very beginning, then, the visitor moved from the Queen’s clothing to the work of the artisans who had supplied its fabrics.²

The museum’s mission extends beyond Thailand alone. It has set itself the task of collecting, exhibiting and conserving the textiles of South-East Asia, South Asia and East Asia, both historic and contemporary, and of serving as a resource centre for anyone wishing to learn about them. The emphasis, however, is on the textiles of the Thai royal court and on those associated with Queen Sirikit.⁹

The museum aims to be both a place of knowledge about court textiles and regional textiles, and a gateway to the history of dress in Thailand. At its opening, it was attached to the SUPPORT Foundation, under the Queen’s royal patronage, of which it formed a division. This institutional link reflects the continuity between the support given to weavers and the showcasing of their art within the palace precinct.²

At the heart of the collections is the Thai dress of royal fashion (chut thai phra ratcha niyomSet of eight models of women’s dress created at Queen Sirikit’s initiative, inspired by court traditions, to give Thai women a national costume suited to different occasions.), a set of eight styles of outfit created by Queen Sirikit as Thai national dress. The museum dates them to 1960, and a gallery has been devoted to them since the opening in 2012.²

These eight outfits, worn by the Queen herself, show how a garment inspired by court traditions was designed to become a reference costume.

The other major group is the Queen’s Western-style wardrobe. For her official outfits, the Queen had garments of European cut made from Thai fabrics, notably those of the weavers supported by the SUPPORT Foundation. Her official outfits thus served to promote the country’s weaving.⁴

The French couturier Pierre Balmain played a central role in this approach. According to the museum’s curator, the Queen entrusted him with Thai fabrics for her official wardrobe in order to make them known. In 2016, the exhibition ‘Fit for a Queen’ traced their twenty-two years of collaboration. The outfits shown in 2025 span several decades, from 1960 to 2000.³

The museum is not confined to court dress. In 2016, the exhibition ‘Dressing Gods and Demons: Costumes for KhonMasked dance drama of the Thai court tradition, which stages the Ramakien.’ was devoted to khon. It presented its origins and history, together with costumes, masks and jewellery, both old and recent.

The modern costumes on display had been created for the revival of this art, undertaken on the Queen’s initiative. Queen Sirikit’s work on behalf of textiles thus extended to the costumes of this art.

The museum’s conservation work is illustrated by the project ‘Great and Good Friends: Historic Gifts between the Kingdom of Thailand and the United States of America’, an online exhibition devoted to the gifts exchanged between Siam and the United States. It includes a letter from King Mongkut addressed to the American President Buchanan on 14 February 1861, a Japanese-style sword in gold niello, that is, decorated with black inlay, a gold niello cup with silver mounts dated 1931, a woven reed mat adorned with the astrological sign of the dog, and a gold ceremonial robe.¹¹

In 2017, these objects were treated at the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum Support Center in Suitland, Maryland. The textile conservator Julia Brennan presented the treatment of the gold ceremonial robe at a gathering held at the Smithsonian Institution in December 2017.¹¹

Education holds an important place in the project. The education workshop, the specialist library and the lecture hall welcome visitors who come as much to learn as to look. In 2016, for the Queen’s seventh twelve-year cyclePeriod of twelve years corresponding to the cycle of zodiac animals; in Thailand, the completion of a cycle, such as the seventh at the age of eighty-four, is marked by celebrations, notably for royal birthdays., that is, her eighty-fourth birthday, the museum opened new exhibitions and an activity room where visitors can touch objects similar to those on display.

The museum also makes several hundred textile and metal objects, as well as virtual exhibitions, available on the Google Arts & Culture platform, which offer a tour of both floors of the building.¹⁰

In 2025, the visitor route is organised around two major exhibitions that take up the institution’s two main threads. Opened on 16 August 2025, ‘ชุดไทย : จากราชสำนักสู่ราชนิยม’ (‘Thai Dress: From the Court to Royal Fashion’) presents the eight outfits of the Thai dress of royal fashion worn by the Queen. A second exhibition brings together her Western-style outfits cut from Thai fabrics, from 1960 to 2000.⁷

These two groups sum up what the museum seeks to convey: the way in which a queen made Thai weaving an element of royal representation, both in a national dress and in an international wardrobe.

Queen Sirikit, who had become the Queen Mother, died in 2025. From 27 October 2025, admission to the museum became free in tribute to the late Queen, for the period of mourning. The place she had wished for was thus transformed into a place of remembrance, where the public comes to see the clothes she wore and the fabrics she supported.⁵

The museum is open every day. It is reached from Tha Chang pier, served by the Chao Phraya Express Boat, and then through the Wisetchaisri Gate of the Grand Palace. The former Royal Treasury building is thus today one of the first buildings that visitors to the palace encounter.⁶