Dream weavers

In the craft village of Quat Dong, women were traditionally judged on their ability to embroider – perhaps it’s no wonder girls start practicing while still in primary school.
As soon as school ends for the day, 10-year-old Nguyen Thi Khuyen rushes home to her house in Quat Dong village in Hanoi’s Thuong Tin district.
Khuyen comes from a family of embroiderers. She is now old enough to ply the family trade. “My grandmother says that I have to do this work, but I don’t know why,” says Khuyen, who has been weaving for five months.
As Khuyen puts her head down and toils away, her two younger brothers are also busy sweating – however, they’re playing hide-and-seek in the garden. Khuyen’s mother Nguyen Thi Yen knows it is hard for a child to understand why she must work while her brothers get to play.
“I have to teach her how to make brocades as I want her to become a good embroiderer in the future,” says Yen. “I remember when I was eight years old I started to learn to embroider. My mother made me do it, too. When I asked why, she said she had to learn it when she was seven, too!”
Her mother, Do Thi Tu, is now eighty-years-old. She claims that traditionally when a woman got married they had to know how to embroider. “Embroidering was regarded as a way to measure to a woman’s value a Quat Dong woman,” says Tu.
Quat Dong village is home to more than 450 households engaged in the craft. The cottage industry employs more than 1,000 labourers.
The village has been officially declared a “tourism-oriented craft village”. All through the village women sit in open courtyards and windows whole families embroidering red commemorative banners, portraits and household items.
Historical trade
The village is said to be a historical home of embroidery in Vietnam. A local resident, Le Cong Hanh (1606 - 1661), rose through the royal court and became an ambassador to China, where he learned the craft of embroidery. When he returned to his homeland he introduced the craft where it took root. The beauty and quality of the village’s products grew in reputation and became a favourite of royal mandarins and dignitaries in Thang Long (Hanoi today).
Although the skills spread across the country, works by Quat Dong’s artisans were considered the best.
In the beginning, Vietnamese used embroidery to add quotations from devotional works to pagoda curtains, to embellish ceremonial cloths and to decorate clothes from royalty. The first embroidery threads were silk, although cotton is now most frequently used.
Silk is very time-consuming to work with, but lasts for centuries. Ancient samples still remain in a few of Quat Dong’s pagodas. Over time frames were made from wood rather than bamboo. Needle technology changed from bone or wood to metal, and work became more pictorial rather than decorative – especially once the French began ordering pieces.
Between the 1960s and 1980s, under the collectivised system, villagers from Quat Dong produced tablecloths, bedspreads, sheets and pillowcases for export to other socialist nations. Later, under the policy of doi moi (renovation), Quat Dong villagers had to adapt to the open market. Now the village’s products are exported to countries such as Japan, Britain, France and the US.
Hoang Thi Khuong, an owner of a shop who embroiders with her feet due to disability, often welcomes Japanese, British and French tourists into her shop. “I mainly sell my products to Japanese customers. They demand very high quality work and will refuse an item, if there is just one very small flaw,” she says.
It will take Yen’s daughter 3-4 years of practice before she can produce an “acceptable” piece. In that time Khuyen will study painting, fine art and sculpture while practicing embroidery on pillows and blankets. Years from now, perhaps, she will teach her own daughter.