Man on Phu Quoc Island 'turns' lotus leaves into lamps, wallets, paintings...

Mr. Thai is from Rach Gia City, Kien Giang. During his business trips to Phu Quoc, he fell in love with this island and decided to stay and start a business there around 2014.

Mr. Thai and his fashion wallet made from lotus leaves

Wishing to contribute to enriching the tourism products of the pearl island, in 2016 he started researching to make products from lotus leaves, instead of glass. During the research and testing process, he encountered many difficulties to find the most standard formula to "transform" lotus leaves into a highly durable material while still keeping the shape of the leaves and veins intact. He said that lotus leaves have a completely different structure from bodhi leaves or almond leaves. Therefore, it takes a lot of time to process and keep the leaf membrane and veins of lotus leaves connected together.

Processing lotus leaves is very elaborate.

The painting of Guanyin Bodhisattva took nearly a month to complete.

"To process lotus leaves to a durable level to replace paper for painting, fabric for making bags, wallets, lamps... costs a lot of money and is also very laborious. The loss rate is very high, 7-8 leaves out of 100 leaves is a blessing. Lotus leaves also have to be selected in Dong Thap and bought to the island," Mr. Thai shared.

Lotus paintings are hand painted on lotus leaves

Currently, Mr. Thai's facility produces 4 main products from lotus leaves, including: lamps, paintings, wallets and calligraphy on lotus. What he is most proud of is successfully creating painting materials and being able to draw many types of paintings with high sophistication and aesthetics such as: Buddha paintings, flowers, landscapes...

Lotus painting is hand painted on lotus leaf background

Lotus paintings are hand painted on lotus leaves

Having achieved success, Mr. Thai continues to research and process lotus leaves to achieve the highest durability to make beautiful paintings, handicrafts, and fashion products.

The largest painting he has ever made is a painting of Guanyin Bodhisattva, 2.4 m long and 1.2 m wide. He and his team worked continuously for a month, and the selling price was up to 50 million VND.

Fashionable wallets made from lotus leaves

Among the products made from lotus leaves, the wallet is the most outstanding and unique product because he processes the lotus leaves to achieve a durability similar to fabric and paints many patterns on them. For the lotus leaf lamp products, he uses lotus leaves to cover them in an extremely elaborate and beautiful way. Depending on the size, products made from lotus leaves cost from several hundred thousand dong to hundreds of millions of dong.

Lotus leaves are made into decorative lamps

Mr. Thai said that he is growing lotus in Rach Gia City using his own techniques and plans to grow more on Phu Quoc Island in the near future, to both proactively source quality lotus leaves and create more destinations for tourists.

Source: https://thanhnien.vn/nguoi-dan-ong-o-dao-phu-quoc-bien-la-sen-thanh-den-vi-tranh-185250303172924371.htm