Dai Bai Bronze Casting Village

People say the sound of hammers on bronze once rang through Đại Bái from one end of the village to the other, from early morning until late at night. The hammers are still heard today, but more softly. They come from finishing workshops now, and no longer from a foundry.

Đại Bái is now a village of Gia Bình commune. The commune lies in Bắc Ninh province and took its present form in an administrative merger on July 1, 2025. Đại Bái is called the cradle of bronze casting in northern Vietnam, with a history of about a thousand years. In 2026 the village has 2,169 households. Of these, 1,000 work in the traditional craft and in business services around it.

One thousand households in a single village is no small number.

Old records link the craft of hammering and beating bronze in Đại Bái to the early 11th century, and to a man named Nguyễn Công Truyền. He was born in 989 and died in 1069. The community honors him as the founder of the craft. Honoring him is how the village keeps its identity and holds together across many generations.

The village communal house is called Diên Lộc, and also the Đại Bái communal house. It honors the founder of the craft, Nguyễn Công Truyền, and also Lạc Long Quân, a sea dragon lord of Vietnamese legend. Also honored are the lesser deity Nguyễn Công Hiệp and the later masters of the craft.

In the middle room of the hall, in a shrine against the back wall, stands a bronze statue of the founder. It is 106 centimeters tall, with shoulders 41 centimeters wide. Bronze workers of Đại Bái cast it under the Nguyễn dynasty, Vietnam's last royal dynasty. Craftsmen who cast a statue of the founder of their own trade show their pride in it without needing words.

The history of the communal house has one turn worth remembering. In the old days, the village had two communal houses. The inner one, named Văn Lãng, honored the village's guardian spirit. The outer one, named Diên Lộc, honored the founder of the craft. In 1947, Diên Lộc was burned and wrecked. In 1948, Văn Lãng was burned to the ground. In 1954, the villagers used salvage from the two old buildings to raise the present one, and named it Diên Lộc. The house standing today is new, but it carries the memory of two old ones.

Now to the craft itself.

Many people picture a red furnace fire and molten bronze pouring into a mold. The reality today is different. The casting furnaces in the village have stopped, under the province's rules on protecting the environment. The workshops of Đại Bái now work with licensed places outside the village, and those places do the casting of the rough forms. In the village itself, work centers on finishing a piece: hammering, engraving, polishing, and inlay known as tam khí and as five colors.

Tam khí means three metals: gold, silver and bronze. Five colors is the technique of combining metals of several colors on a single piece. In a bronze picture or a finely made set of altar vessels from here, most of the delicacy comes from these finishing steps done by hand, and not from machines.

Many kinds of goods are made in Đại Bái today. There are sets of altar vessels for family ancestors, statues of sacred animals, feng shui objects, bronze art pictures and bronze flowers.

The 29th day of the ninth lunar month is the memorial day of the founder of the Đại Bái craft, held every year. The ritual takes place in Gia Bình commune on this date. It is a time when the village shows that it is a community as well as an economy, with ritual, memory and gratitude passed down through each generation of craftsmen.

The village has adapted to its environment, its market and its times. It keeps its core: the hands of the craftsmen, techniques passed down through the generations, and pride in a founder from a thousand years ago.