Owner of 5 OCOP hand-embroidered products and his passion for preserving the craft

Artisan Nguyen Thi Hang - Director of My Duc Hand Embroidery Cooperative is from Dong Tam commune, My Duc, Hanoi, where the embroidery profession once had a golden age.

Chủ nhân của 5 sản phẩm thêu tay OCOP và tâm huyết gìn giữ nghề — Artisan Nguyen Thi Hang - Director of My Duc Hand Embroidery Cooperative (left) introduces embroidery techniques. Photo: *Provided by the character.*

Then, more than 20 years ago, the hand embroidery profession here gradually faded away. The consumption market was difficult, there were few jobs, and unstable incomes, so most of Dong Tam people could not stay with the embroidery profession. Ms. Nguyen Thi Hang confided: “I knew how to hold a needle before I knew how to hold a pen because at that time, the pen we dipped in ink did not have many colors, but my mother's embroidery threads had many colors, so I was attracted to it. At first, I only embroidered napkins, until 1990, Uncle Tham in the village signed a contract to make Japanese kimono, I went to his workshop to work. The three surrounding communes, Thuong Lam, Dong Tam and Bot Xuyen, had about 1,000 needlewomen like that. By the end of the 90s, export contracts were gradually decreasing, but I still followed the profession and learned more in many other places in the country as well as abroad, and in 2002, I opened my own workshop. In 2005, I got married, opened my own embroidery shop on Nguyen Thai Hoc Street (Hanoi) and then moved to Lac Long Quan Street, where I have been selling ever since.

In modern society, although there are many industrial embroidery products made by machines, the unique value of traditional hand embroidery lies in the skillful hands and creative minds of the craftsmen, which cannot be replaced by any machine. Recently, seeing that the traditional embroidery market has decreased and the traditional embroidery profession has been lost, Ms. Hang has just established the My Duc Hand Embroidery Cooperative with 8 members with the desire to restore it. In the 2024 OCOP product classification assessment, My Duc district has 13 new products participating in the assessment, the Cooperative has 5 products including the national flower hand embroidery painting welcoming spring, the Temple of Literature hand embroidery painting, the One Pillar Pagoda hand embroidery painting, the sunflower hand embroidery painting, the Zen Lotus hand embroidery painting ranked 3 stars... After finding a way to bring traditional embroidery into art paintings to suit the modern interior space, the couple decided to move the shop to Lac Long Quan street to focus on creation. At that time, they had the problem that if they went alone, there would not be many playgrounds and not many people would know them, so they came up with a way to train and pass on their profession to others through two forms: offline and online for those who work in the profession or those who love the profession.

Online, she has trained nearly 500 students domestically and internationally. Offline, 60-70% of students are designers, students majoring in graduation projects, and fashion company owners. Not only simply instructing on hand embroidery techniques, her classes are also a bridge to bring fashion designers or people working in the fashion industry closer to traditional hand embroidery villages.

Students learn from basic to advanced embroidery techniques, share secrets from artisans, and explore the customs, practices, and culture of the craft village. Thanks to that, they understand more about the profound meanings of each traditional pattern and motif to create products that not only have essence but also have soul. From those courses, some overseas Vietnamese or fashion students have brought traditional embroidery knowledge and skills abroad to promote Vietnamese handicraft products. In the countryside, when Ms. Hang opened the workshop in 2022, there were students, but now many have split off to create new embroidery workshops, so successful that they pay hundreds of millions of dong in wages to workers each month, or even win the YouTube silver button because of the large number of followers online. Previously, there was no work connection between her and them, but she has an idea that if she gets support and large export contracts in the future, she will gather skilled people to develop the embroidery profession of My Duc district in a new direction, focusing on the collective rather than just individuals as at present.

Hand embroidery is quite flexible. In addition to working full-time in the factory, you can choose to work part-time during your free time at home or when there are few customers at the market.