Thanh Ha Pottery Village

Most of the roof tiles over the old houses of Hoi An came from one village. They are called ngói âm dương, and some of the houses they cover are 300 years old. The village is Thanh Hà. From the 17th century to the 19th, bricks and tiles from here went down the Thu Bồn River again and again, to help build the international trading port of Hoi An. The pottery village helped give a World Heritage town its look.

Thanh Hà has a history of more than 500 years. According to the clan genealogies, the ancestors of its people came from Thanh Hóa province, in the north. They arrived in the late 15th century and the early 16th, after the Lê dynasty defeated Champa in 1471. Champa was an ancient kingdom on the central and southern coast of what is now Vietnam. The newcomers brought the trades of pottery, bricks and tiles. They settled right on the bank of the Thu Bồn River, where the clay was good, the water was plentiful, and goods could easily travel by boat.

Legend and the genealogies give the name a meaning, though it is not formal history. Thanh Hà can be understood as "the river of the Thanh Hóa people." Thanh stands for Thanh Hóa, and hà means river. The name is a mark of the migration from north to south, which carried both a trade and the identity of a homeland into new land.

The secret of Thanh Hà pottery lies in the river silt clay of the Thu Bồn, which is pliable and fine and has no grit. The artisans take clay from the riverbank, dry it, pound it fine, mix it with water and let it rest before shaping. Then the pieces are fired in a traditional wood kiln at high heat for several days. The result is a warm, natural red-brown. This is earthenware, called terracotta in English, and it is not glazed. That is the clearest difference from the Bát Tràng pottery of Hanoi, which is usually glazed in color.

In a traditional workshop, the potter's wheel uses no electricity. The artisan sits and turns the lower wheel with a foot, while the hands shape the clay on top. Hands and feet work together, and it takes years of practice to master. The foot-pedal wheel is the traditional technique of Thanh Hà. Many modern workshops have moved to electric wheels for higher output, but the traditional workshops keep the pedal wheel.

On August 27, 2019, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism added the Thanh Hà pottery craft to the National List of Intangible Cultural Heritage. It was not only the technique that was recognized. It was also a store of folk knowledge: how to choose clay by season, how to rest it, and how to fire each kind of product. The village has its own work words, which outsiders cannot follow. Two of them are đốt non and đốt già. Two others are miết bàn and vét đất. This is heritage that lives in speech.

The goods of Thanh Hà are varied. For the kitchen there are earthen cooking pots, nồi đất, and pots for braised fish, niêu cá kho. There are also jars called chum tương, and water vats, vại nước. Tương is a fermented soybean paste, eaten as a dipping sauce. There are statues of the 12 zodiac animals, and religious statues for decoration and worship. The most distinctive specialty is tò he đất. It is a fired clay figure that can be blown to make a sound. Tò he in Hanoi are little figures shaped from dyed rice dough, so the two are quite different.

Thanh Hà Terracotta Park is the largest miniature pottery museum in Vietnam. It covers about 5,000 square meters. Its founder is the architect Lê Đức Hạ, a son of Thanh Hà itself. After finding success in the city, he came home and invested in the park to honor the pottery of his native village. Inside are the Eiffel Tower, the Roman Colosseum and the Triumphal Arch. There are also the Temple of Literature in Hanoi and the One Pillar Pagoda. All of them are in miniature, and all are made of Thanh Hà terracotta. The park joins traditional heritage with contemporary art in an unusual way.

Thanh Hà has spent more than 500 years with earth and fire, and it is still here in the heart of Hoi An's heritage. Each tile on an old roof is a handprint of a potter from long ago. And somewhere in the village, a potter still sits pedaling the wheel, feeling every breath of the clay, carrying on the trade of the ancestors from five centuries ago.