Chu Dau Pottery Village

In 1980, a Japanese diplomat stood looking at the ceramics collection of the Topkapi Museum in Istanbul, Turkey. He was a secretary at the Embassy of Japan in Hanoi. Suddenly he noticed a vase that looked neither Chinese nor Japanese. Around its shoulder ran a line of Chinese characters. He read it and was astonished. It said "Nam Sách châu", an old place name from the Hải Dương region of Vietnam.

His name was Makoto Anabuki. The chance discovery he made in Istanbul led to something remarkable. A Vietnamese pottery village, buried for about 300 years, was found again and brought back to life.

That village is Chu Đậu. Its story is one of a heritage lost and then reborn.

The village lies in the hamlet of Chu Đậu, in the commune of Thái Tân. When communes were merged on July 1, 2025, Thái Tân kept its name. The reason was its link to the Chu Đậu pottery brand. The area now belongs to the city of Hải Phòng, after Hải Dương province was merged into Hải Phòng.

From the late 14th century to the 17th century, Chu Đậu was one of the finest centers of ceramic production in Đại Việt, an old name for Vietnam. Its wares were exported to Japan and to the island nations of Southeast Asia. This was not ordinary pottery for everyday households. It was luxury ware made for the nobility and the upper classes of Asia. Its hallmarks were white clay and a blended white glaze. The designs were painted in blue beneath that white glaze. They showed chrysanthemums, orchids, fish, birds, dragons and phoenixes, all delicate and refined.

From the 16th century on, long wars laid waste to the region. On one side was the Mạc dynasty. On the other were the Lê emperors and the Trịnh lords. The Trịnh lords were a noble family who dominated northern Vietnam. In the 17th century, the craft village slowly died out, and the secrets of its pottery were lost. For about 300 years, Chu Đậu was only a name on the map. No one made pottery there anymore.

That lasted until 1980, when Makoto Anabuki found the vase at Topkapi and wrote a letter to Vietnam.

The Topkapi Museum in Istanbul was once the palace where the Ottoman sultans lived and ruled, from 1465 to 1856. Today it is a museum, and its collection of East Asian ceramics is among the largest in the world. There is Chinese porcelain from Jingdezhen, Japanese porcelain from Imari, and Vietnamese pottery from Chu Đậu. The most famous Chu Đậu vase carries a line of writing around its shoulder. The line begins with a date, the eighth year of the Thái Hòa era. That was the year 1450, under Emperor Lê Nhân Tông. Then it says the vase was painted by Bùi Thị Hý, an artisan of Nam Sách.

It is one of the oldest artist's signatures on Vietnamese pottery. What makes it special is that it belongs to a woman. Bùi Thị Hý left her mark in clay and blue glaze. More than 500 years later, people still speak her name.

After Anabuki's letter, Vietnamese archaeologists carried out excavations in 1986. In the hamlet of Chu Đậu, they uncovered a center of fine ceramic production that had lain buried in the ground.

And there was even greater proof. In 1997, Vietnamese authorities raised an ancient shipwreck from the waters off Cù Lao Chàm, in Quảng Nam. The ship carried about 340,000 pieces of pottery from the 15th century. Of these, 240,000 were still whole, and most of them were Chu Đậu ware. This was the decisive evidence of the great place Chu Đậu pottery held in the sea trade of East Asia at that time. It was not sold only at home. It crossed the ocean, all the way to Istanbul.

In 2001, the Hanoi Trade Corporation, known as Hapro, decided to invest in reviving the craft village. The first phase cost about 24 billion dong. The money went to building workshops and recovering the old techniques. Today, the Chu Đậu Ceramics Joint Stock Company runs production and welcomes visitors. Modern Chu Đậu ware is once again exported, to Japan, South Korea, the United States and Europe. Its signature piece is a replica of the Topkapi vase.

Visitors can go into the workshop and watch the artisans at work. They prepare the clay, shape it over molds, paint the patterns, glaze the pieces and fire them in the kiln. Visitors can also take up a brush, dab blue glaze onto the face of a plate, and feel their own hands touching the very craft that Bùi Thị Hý practiced 500 years ago.

The pottery village of Chu Đậu tells of a craft that could die away but never vanish completely. It slept in the earth, at the bottom of the ocean and in museums around the world, waiting for the day it would be woken.

In the workshop, an artisan's hands gently draw the clay up on the turning wheel. There is the soft sound of wet clay against the palm, and the smell of fired earth drifting through the air. Standing there, one comes to see that nothing here was ever truly lost. It was only waiting for someone to come and find it.