Jim Thompson was a businessman of silk. For his business purposes, he frequently had to travel in different neighboring lands, and thus he gathered a large number Buddhist and secular arts. He majorly gathered different Southeast Asian art collections. Among his collections, most of them belonged to Laos, Cambodia and Burma. He built a new home to exhibit his arts in 1958 and his residing house was one of the antiques in Thailand, which was completed in 1959. The house is located beside a canal and his weaving also continued in the house. Although many of the houses were moved from the canal path, the Jim Thompson house is still there. Currently the Jim Thompson House needs an admission fee to visit. The house architectures are still the same is it was during Thompson’s living period. Visitors are to follow a guide to visit the house.

Most of the features of the Jim Thompson House is a mixture of Western and Thai architecture. There is some service quarters and currently being used as museum display to show the 30 years long collection of Mr. Thompson. They contain the collections of Mr. Thompson. Mr. Thompson was disappeared in 1967 at a jungle in Malaysia and ever returned. The Jim Thompson villa is made of the very best teakwood and was transported to Bangkok.

At present, The James H. W. Thompson Foundation runs the Jim Thompson House. The Jim Thompson House has been built in such a way that those are easily detachable and easy to carry to places. When the house pieces were brought at the current location, Mr. Thompson could not assemble them rightly and then he had to seek carpenters from the previous location to reorganize the six antique teakwood villas.