In Vietnam, handcraft is spread across the regions and is usually tied to a village. Silk in Van Phuc, ceramics in Bat Trang, rattan and bamboo weaving in Phu Vinh, lacquer in Ha Thai, bronze casting in Ngu Xa, woodblock prints in Dong Ho. That way of naming says something very much our own: a craft does not belong to a factory but to a place where people live, where the work is done in the yard of the house and passed to the child who grows up in that yard.
We set our workshop inside a craft village, so we see both sides of this every day. The fine side is skill, the movements that only time can teach. The hard side is clear too, and saying it is fairer than telling only the fine part.
The difficulty of a craft made by hand
The first thing is rhythm. Something made by hand needs time that the market usually does not want to wait for. At our place, the waiting for wax to cool is longer than the making, and each round of candles goes through several days before it is wrapped. For a small workshop, that rhythm means limited numbers, and the number in each round stays small.
The second thing is the difference between one piece and the next. When people work by hand, two cups of the same model are still a little different. For a long time that difference was counted as a fault. We see it another way: each piece is its own edition, and our work is to make every one of those editions pass, not yet to make them identical.
The third thing is succession. In many craft villages, the most skilled person is usually also the oldest, and the young have many other, easier choices. Nobody solves this with a rallying cry. It changes only when the craft can support a family decently, and that is the work of workshops like ours.
What handcraft has that a production line struggles to copy
Materials are the first strength, and they grow right around us. Cinnamon in Yen Bai and Quang Nam. Bamboo and rattan across the hill regions. Pepper in the Central Highlands and Phu Quoc. Wood, leaves, bark, resin, each region its own. A craft standing on local materials has a root, and that root cannot be moved.
The second strength is knowledge gathered in human hands. How to strip a length of cinnamon bark at the right season. How to shave a bamboo strip so it is soft enough without breaking. How to read a damp day to know how much to pour today. These things are not in books; they are in the hands, and a machine takes a very long time to come close.
The third strength is the story. People who buy handcraft today want to know where a piece came from and who made it. This is where a Vietnamese craft village has more to tell than almost anywhere else.
The part we take on
We are not able to speak for a whole industry. What we take on is much smaller: to make the pieces leaving the workshop at no. 31, DM6, Van Phuc craft village good enough to stand beside goods from anywhere, and then to pay the people who made them at the level this craft deserves.
To this day our products have been selling in the United States, Europe and Australia for some time, through the local businesses and sellers we work with. Each time a crate leaves the village, we see one thing more clearly: this craft in our people's hands can travel far, and it only needs to be done carefully.
A few questions you often send us
What crafts do Vietnamese craft villages have
A great many, each region with its own strength, such as silk weaving, ceramics, rattan and bamboo weaving, lacquer, bronze casting, papermaking, woodblock prints and carpentry. Most are tied to a village and passed down within the family.
Why does a handmade piece take so much time
Because time and human hands sit in every piece, and because the number made in each round is limited. Within that are also the pieces that did not pass and had to be set aside, and the labour of the people who made them.
Can Vietnamese handcraft travel out into the world
It can, and it has. What is needed is steady quality, packing made for long journeys, and a story told clearly.
Read more a day at the workshop in the craft village, the story of handcraft going to the US, the EU and Australia, and the things we are preparing.