This covered bowl and six spoons are thickly painted with overglaze enamels, in the style known as Lai Nam Thong or ‘gold-wash pattern’. The bowl is decorated with pink lotus amongst leafy green sprays on a gold ground. The six spoons include both the gilded floral Lai Nam Thong design and the Bencharong or ‘five-color’ palette with motifs of deities or Thep phanom, with hands clasped in prayer.Bencharong, along with its close variant Lai Nam Thong, are a class of Chinese export ware made exclusively for the Thai market from the eighteenth to the nineteenth centuries, initially for the royal court and later the well-to-do merchants.
