The royal masked dance of Siam.
โขน · Khon
Cast by hand · Painted by you
$40
Not yet available · arriving 2027
Mask, five pots of colour, a brush and the story card.
โขน · Thailand
Put the mask on and you are the god, and everyone in the courtyard agreed to that beforehand.
Khon performs the Ramakien, Thailand's telling of the Ramayana, and it has been court art since Ayutthaya. It was danced for kings, funded by kings, and for long stretches performed only by men attached to the palace.
Demons and monkeys wear the full head. Heroes and heroines do not, so the hierarchy of the entire cast is legible before a single step is danced. That rule has not moved in centuries.
There are more than a hundred demon faces and around thirty varieties of monkey, each one fixed by colour, by crown and by the shape of the mouth. A Bangkok audience could once name every one of them across a dark courtyard by firelight.
Ramakien mural, Wat Phra Kaew, Bangkok
The head is built up in layers over a clay mould, then lacquered, gilded and set with mirror glass cut by hand. A single one takes months, and the gold is real leaf, which is why the old ones in the Bangkok collections still throw light a century on.
The dancer sees through two small holes below the eye sockets and cannot speak a word. A narrator and a chorus carry the entire text. Everything left is the body, and the training for it starts in childhood.
Hanuman appears here too, white-faced, as he does in Cambodia. Same character, same epic, two neighbours who carried it differently. Set the Thai and the Khmer versions side by side.
Ramakien mural, Wat Phra Kaew, Bangkok
Khon survived because kings paid for it, and it nearly did not survive the twentieth century when that money thinned out. It was brought back under royal patronage and went onto the UNESCO Representative List in 2018.
That is the same year Cambodia's lakhon khol went onto the Urgent Safeguarding List.
Both are in this collection for exactly that reason.
You could read the entire cast from the masks alone, before a single step was danced.
Ours is plaster rather than papier-mâché, which means it will take gold paint but not gold leaf, and it will not take cut mirror unless you are considerably more ambitious than we were.
Gold and white gets you most of the way. A little green where the demons live gets you the rest.
Plaster, poured one at a time, in the house on the Siem Reap River.
No colour. The sculpt is the guide: raised edges catch the brush and hold it where it belongs.
Khon is gold leaf and cut glass. Gold on the face, red on the crown, white in the eyes gets you close.
What the mask is in its own tradition, before we cast it in plaster and send it out white.
Something not here? Write to hello@blankstory.co. One of us answers, usually the same day.
Yes. Water-based, non-toxic, and it comes off skin and off a table with a damp cloth. Built for a kitchen table on a Sunday.
A story card with the history and the traditional colours, so you know what you are looking at. No paint-by-numbers. The mask ships white on purpose.
Resin is cheaper to ship and it feels like a phone case. Plaster takes paint properly, keeps a sharp edge on every carved line, and has the weight that puts a thing on a shelf instead of in a drawer.
Khon arrives in 2027. We will not put a month against it until the moulds are cut and the first run is right.
Anywhere in Cambodia. Pick it up free at Peaceful Chaos in Siem Reap, have it brought to your door in Siem Reap, or sent by courier to any province. The delivery fee shows at checkout. You pay by KHQR from any Cambodian bank app.
Yes, and we would like that. Minimum order is one case of four, prepaid, and you can collect free from the office in Siem Reap or have it sent anywhere in Cambodia. Full pricing and terms sit behind a trade login. Write to us with the name of the shop and we will send a code the same day.
Not yet available · arriving 2027
Khon lands in 2027. Leave your email and you will know the day it does.