In Vietnam, the embroidery has been well known for the products of trade villages from Ha Tay, Bac Ninh, Hai Duong provinces (North Vietnam,) one of the famous village of the embroidery trade is Van Lam (Ninh Hai commune, Hoa Lu district, Ninh Binh province) with their original embroidery products.
The embroidering trade has been set up here more than 700 years ago. The ancestor of this trade is Mr. Do Cong Hau - a general of Tran dynasty who taught the children of the village to learn and maintain their traditional trade. In the painting, the artist uses a paintbrush with different colors to make a picture. In hand embroidery, the artist gently and carefully selects each tiny thread with different colors and shades. In some pictures, the artist may use up to 500 different one, and threads on to a huge cloth material to make a piece of art. In some case, it takes a few months for a person to perform on a piece. The work requires much more patience than in painting and sculpting. It is even harder in the 3-dimension hand embroidery. The surface of the picture is raised up at different levels to the need to make picture like real. Painting cannot do it unless you use wood sculpture. This is the unique technique you may not find anywhere else in the world of this type of art.
These paintings are bought from the villagers who made them with very high quality. Compare to many other touristic paintings, they all have high density of needle threads and exquisite colors made by high skilled embroiderers. There were a lot of needlework and careful mixing colors that made these beautiful paintings. You will be surprised about how much work they took to make a picture in turning over to see the back of the paintings.
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