Dong Ho village is about 33km far from Hanoi city and close to the Southern bank of the Duong River, a traditional handicraft village, in Song Ho village, Thuan Thanh district, Bac Ninh, is well-known by many people for its traditional paintings and Dong Ho market made of spiritual value of Vietnamese culture.
Each year, the most crowded and bustling time of the Dong Ho market is in December, meeting in 5 sessions on 6, 11, 16, 21 and 26. Thousands of paintings are brought to the shelves to sell to dealers, or family and tourists for Tet because those pictures according to the Vietnamese culture, bring wealth and honor to their house. After the final market (26/12 in lunar calendar) the remaining families are all covered up to take away and wait for the next season to bring back the market sale. Coming to the market, the Dong Ho village market is not only for shopper and buyer of paintings, but also for folk art enthusiasts who enjoy to admire the beauty of those paintings in the spring festival.
Dong Ho painting, or full name is Dong Ho folk wood carvings, is a line of Vietnamese folk paintings originating from Dong Ho village (Song Ho commune, Thuan Thanh district, Bac Ninh province). In the past, the paintings were sold mainly for the Lunar New Year, the rural people bought paintings hanging on the wall.
In addition to the characteristics of lines and layouts, the folk theme of Dong Ho painting is located in the paper and color. Dong Ho paper is called scallop paper: crushed scallop shell, a thin shell mixed with glue (the glue is made from rice flour or sticky rice, sometimes cooked with tapioca flour – The scallops are usually thinly cooked from either plain rice flour or cassava flour, and glutinous rice from sticky rice).
Brushes made from pine leaves create a runny look and a natural white of shell with sparkling light fragments, which can be added to the glue during the process of making the paper. The colors used in the glue are naturally colored from plants such as black (charcoal or bamboo charcoal), blue (copper rust, indigo), … These are quite basic colors, not mixed and because the number of colors corresponds to the number of wood engravings, so Dong Ho paintings often only use up to four colors.
In addition, the unique feature of Dong Ho painting is the painting material, which is handcrafted from the natural materials: paper made from the tree, red from the bricks, color yellow flowers from the scallop, black from bamboo leaves burned, white is crushed from shells, snails …
On the basis of these basic colors people have created more colors ranging from mixing the colors to drawing on the wonderful work. To finish a product, no need to carve on the wood, available paper and color, painters must be very elaborate, carefully in each stage: painting the glue on paper, drying in the sunlight, when printing must print each color in turn, if there are 5 colors, 5 times, each time printing is exposed …. Every stage is meticulously demanding that the painters always be careful, picky, and pay attention to every detail to get a beautiful picture.
Let’s come to Dong Ho Village and experience the most valuable craftsmanship, traditional paintings of Vietnam!
