The small house of Mrs. Nhi and her daughter is located in a rare quiet alley in the street that people call "the street that never sleeps". The house is very simple, the interior decoration is a series of embroidered paintings that the mother and daughter made and embroidery frames displayed around the house.
Like many other women in Van Lam, Mrs. Dinh Thi Nhi had just put down her oars to take tourists home from Tam Coc wharf and hurriedly sat down at her embroidery frame to finish the product that the customer had ordered. The work that followed the work seemed hard for a woman in her seventies, but for her it was a joy and pride in the profession that she and the people here have devoted their whole lives to.
When she knew we wanted to learn about the founder of the lace-weaving profession in Van Lam, Mrs. Nhi suddenly became pensive, her eyes filled with nostalgia as she read to us four oral poems of the local people praising the embroidery profession: "There is a small embroiderer/Lighting a lamp brighter than the stars/Holding a needle like Trieu Tu dancing with a sword/Crossing his legs like Khong Minh reading a book".
According to Mrs. Nhi's memories, at that time, her grandfather, a poor Confucian scholar named Dinh Kim Tuyen, had five children: Dinh Ngoc Henh, Dinh Ngoc Xoang, Dinh Thi Henh, Dinh Ngoc Hien, and Dinh Ngoc Hoang. With the idea that "a field full of rice is not as good as a job in hand", Mr. Tuyen sold his fields and gardens to his two sons, Mr. Henh and Mr. Xoang, who were then nineteen and twenty years old, to Ha Dong to study advanced embroidery at Mr. Han Tham's house.
The two brothers, Mr. Hênh and Mr. Xoang, were good at traditional embroidery from their village, so they learned the new lace embroidery craft very quickly and embroidered beautifully. After mastering the craft, the two brothers, Mr. Hênh and Mr. Xoang, went to Hanoi to work for Mrs. Le Thai Tinh - the owner of a large, famous embroidery shop in Hanoi's Old Quarter, specializing in serving Western customers. Here, the two brothers continued to work and learn new lace embroidery techniques from the embroiderers in Hanoi. Seeing that the two brothers, Mr. Hênh and Mr. Xoang, were intelligent and skillful, Mrs. Thai Tinh loved them very much and assigned them important orders from large contractors specializing in making goods for the French at that time.
Some time later, with the support and help of Mrs. Thai Tinh, the two brothers Mr. Henh and Mr. Xoang returned to the village to teach all the newly learned lace embroidery techniques to the skilled and highly skilled embroiderers in the village to quickly complete large orders. After that, those who were instructed in the new lace embroidery techniques returned home to teach their family members and relatives. Not long after, the traditional embroiderers had mastered the new lace-rug technique with good product quality.
In particular, with their hands and creativity, the brothers Henh and Xoang and the team of skilled lace embroiderers also created completely new embroidery patterns with fringes and lace - these embroidery patterns are a combination of traditional embroidery techniques with Western fringe and lace techniques. To commemorate and express gratitude for the contributions of the two brothers Henh and Xoang, today the people of Van Lam village have built a temple to worship the founder of Vietnamese embroidery and the two brothers. The villagers also honor Mr. Henh and Xoang as the founders of the lace-rua craft in Van Lam, the ones who contributed to putting Van Lam lace embroidery on the map of lace embroidery in Vietnam as well as other countries in the world.
The embroidery and lace craft and the tradition of Van Lam land have created for the people here many valuable and good qualities and virtues such as diligence, hard work, creativity, high aesthetic taste, neatness, cleanliness, tidiness, and neatness... And it is also the embroidery and lace craft that has contributed to forming aesthetic and ethical standards in the social life of the community, in addition to the exchange, absorption, and transformation of European culture into Vietnamese culture in general, the exchange between Eastern embroidery art and Western lace art.
Ms. Nhi said: Although the motifs on Van Lam's lace and embroidery products are familiar images of Vietnamese culture and art, such as wild flowers such as lemon flowers, strawberry flowers, and asterisks; daily life such as planting rice, harvesting rice, herding buffaloes, and cutting grass, etc., they carry within them cultural and artistic values that transcend time and space. Therefore, Van Lam's lace and embroidery products are not only famous in France but are also present in many European and Asian countries.
Every craft village has its ups and downs, but for Van Lam embroidery village, during its heyday, the whole village was like a workshop, every family worked, every person worked. Children and young people spent their time working in the fields and studying by lamplight doing embroidery. Mrs. Nhi recalled that in the 80s and 90s of the last century, when the craft village was developing, every 10 days or so, groups of 10-20 young people would cycle to Nam Dinh and Hai Phong to get fabric and thread to make and deliver goods for export.
Life was bustling, vibrant, and prosperous, so Van Lam people rarely went far away to work. Van Lam embroiderers were valuable at that time and were invited to teach their craft in the provinces of Thai Binh, Nam Dinh, Hai Phong, Bac Ninh...
Embroidery products exported to the West not only helped people approach Western civilization but also brought tourists from the West to Van Lam. It can be said that these factors unintentionally created the first sketches of tourism in Ninh Binh.
The peaceful village space with the image of a craftsman diligently working on an embroidery frame has become a beautiful, familiar image to the people here. That's why she said that "many years later, a French guest, when returning to Tam Coc, was engrossed in looking for the image of a boatwoman embroidering at Dinh Cac wharf. And the tour guide for the group tried to find her to introduce her to that guest," she said.
It is the memories of the craft village and the lifelong attachment to embroidery that give Mrs. Nhi and the people of Van Lam village more strength to keep the fire of the profession alive. Although being the second generation descendant of the founder of the lace-rug embroidery craft in Van Lam, Mrs. Nhi's family are all "embroiderers" and no one is the "boss", everyone shows their love for the profession in their own way "embroidery work does not bring high income but from the age of 5 to 7 until now, I have never stopped working, even when I was sick. Now that I am old and my eyesight is poor, I just hope that the younger generation will come to learn the craft so that we can pass it on".
Leaving Mrs. Nhi’s peaceful little house, I stepped out into the noisy Western street in Tam Coc. What remained in me were fragments, disjointed memories of a traditional craft village hundreds of years old and the love for the craft that still smolders in the hearts of the people of Van Lam. Hopefully, that flame will have agents to shine forever and be the pride of the heritage land of the Ancient Capital.
Article and photos: Song Nguyen
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