Quat Dong Embroidery Village

A tiny needle slips through the cloth and pulls its thread after it. The worker holds the hoop taut with the left hand, while the right hand sends the needle up and down at an even pace. Each stitch lies close against the next, until together they form a flower petal, the spread of a crane's wings, or the roofline of an old communal house. This is the embroidery village of Quất Động, in Thường Tín, Hanoi, one of the cradles of traditional hand embroidery in Vietnam.

Embroidery here goes back to the 17th century. The village is tied to a legend about the founder of its craft. In the legend he was Doctoral Laureate Lê Công Hành, whose real name was Trần Quốc Khái. Doctoral laureates were scholars who passed the royal examinations, held to select talented and virtuous people to serve the state. He was born in 1606, right here in the village. Many local documents record the legend. On a mission to China, also in the 17th century, he learned the technique of embroidery. He brought it home and taught it to the villagers, and the craft slowly spread across the region. The people of the village have kept this legend alive through many generations. Scholarly records do not fully establish it.

Every year, on the 12th day of the sixth lunar month, the villagers hold a memorial ceremony for the founder of the craft, at the temple dedicated to him in the village. Drums sound and incense drifts. Neighbors old and new gather and remind one another that this delicate craft, as fragile as a single thread, has fed people for generation after generation.

Quất Động is one of 48 traditional craft villages in the Thường Tín area recognized by the city government of Hanoi. Thường Tín is famous as a land of many crafts, among them lacquerware, mother-of-pearl inlay and embroidery. Within that cluster of handicrafts, Quất Động stands out.

Embroidery here takes nimble hands and sharp eyes. The worker sketches a pattern on the cloth. It may be a chrysanthemum, a plum blossom, bamboo, a crane or a butterfly. Then the cloth is stretched on a round frame, and the stitching begins, one stitch at a time. The technique includes many ways of driving the needle, and each one gives its own texture and its own raised surface. A finished picture can take anywhere from a few days to a few months.

The village makes a wide range of goods. There are embroidered landscapes and portraits, festival costumes and hand-embroidered áo dài, ritual objects for pagodas and communal houses, and many decorative items. Embroidery from Quất Động has been exported to many countries around the world. The artisan Thái Văn Bôn is the only person in the village to receive the title People's Artisan.

About 30 years ago, nearly 90 percent of the households in Quất Động commune did embroidery. Over time that figure fell sharply, because income from hand embroidery could hardly compete with factory work. Still, some young people have come back to the craft. They look for ways to refresh the designs and widen the market.

A worker sits beside a frame of cloth. The needle goes up, the needle goes down, and the colored thread catches the light. A picture slowly takes shape, one stitch after another, just as one generation after another has kept the fire of this craft burning for more than 300 years.