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Location: Along Highway No. 1A about twenty
kilometers south from Hanoi, is the patrimonial land of traditional embroidery:
the Quat Dong commune, Thuong Tin district, in Ha Tay province. Scenes formed by
the highly-skilled artisans of Quat Dong have won the hearts and minds of people
around the world with their traditional needle-work in this most-famous
embroidery village.
According to family annals, the ancestor of Quat Dong embroidery, also revered
as the patriarch of Vietnamese embroidery, is Le Cong Hanh. Born in 1606, he
became a well-known scholar of his time when, as a member of the King’s envoy,
he traveled to China where he learned a new embroidery technique. Upon return to
Vietnam, he taught this new technique to the poor villagers of Quat Dong with
all his heart, and it remains a strong tradition to this day. Ever since then,
he has been regarded as the master and patriarch of Vietnamese embroidery. The
anniversary of his death is revered throughout Vietnam on June 12th of every
year. For many Quat Dong villagers, embroidery is considered a long-standing
tradition. All villagers, regardless of age and gender, do intricate
needle-work. Visitors will forever remember the image of a young girl sitting
next to her great-grandmother, being taught lessons handed down for generations
in exactly the same manner amidst the fragrance of rice fields gently waving in
an afternoon breeze. The art of embroidery is taught within the family, and a
potential daughter-in-law wooed from a neighboring village will soon learn the
same skills taught only in this quiet village. To the onlooker, it may seem to
be simple or relaxing work because there is no laboring under a hot sun, or
being subject to the torrential downpours of a seasonal shower. However this
work requires an extremely skillful and steady hand, an eye for the most
intricate details, a demanding concentration, and a thorough commitment to
producing only the highest quality. In order to successfully complete a detailed
and intricate scene, the embroiderer has to first capture the image they wish to
convey, whether it be sitting quietly to observe the sun setting over a forest
lake, or examining an artist’s rendition of a moment in time. Next is to stretch
and test the fabric, inspecting the weave for imperfections or discoloration.
This is followed by making a detailed sketch on the fabric and selecting the
perfect thread colors to convey the desired contrasts and shadows. Once the
needle work begins, the most time consuming challenges the artisan must face are
to form gently curving edge lines while presenting the most intricate and minute
details such as the veins of a leaf, the early morning shades and shadows within
the cusp of a flower, or the fire in the eyes of a rising phoenix. In order to
do so successfully, the embroiderer must flawlessly combine and mingle the
chosen threads with a steady hand for hours on end. They must focus on the
harmony of nature to capture a frozen moment of life in the needle they have
been so well acquainted with since childhood, utilizing the same skills taught
five centuries earlier by Le Cong Hanh to the ancestors of today’s artisans.
Today, these skills continue to attract the attention of foreign markets to this
quiet village of Vietnam.
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