Quat Dong village a birthplace of embroidery

Located in Thuong Tin district, about 23 km from Hanoi’s center, Quat Dong village is popular for its handmade embroidered products. Over hundreds of years, the traditional embroidery village has been preserved and developed by enthusiastic artisans.

Quat Dong craft village is known as the cradle of traditional embroidery. Legend has it that the master of the embroidery craft in Quat Dong Village was Le Cong Hanh (1606-1661).

In 1646, he was sent to China as as King Le Chan Tong’s envoy and learned embroidery. He learned the needlework skills and upon his return, he taught the craft to the villagers of Quat Dong and neighbouring areas. So he was regarded as the Father of embroidery in Vietnam. After his death, the villagers built a temple to pay their gratitude to him.

For many years, locals have created new models with a lot of themes, featuring Vietnamese life styles. The embroidery in Quat Dong has reached a sophisticated and refined level.

After taking care of the crops, Quat Dong villagers focus on embroidery. Each household has traditional sewing frames and many families are the seventh generation to be engaged in the craft.

Besides maintaining the craft in households, the village has opened many cooperatives and workshops which gather 200 to 500 skillful craftspeople. Many of them have become well-known artisans in Vietnam, as well as in the world.

"Currently, Quat Dong Village has attracted many tourists including foreigners," said Emeritus Artisan Le Van Nguyen, president of Thuong Tin Embroidery Association.

"They come to see the craft village and buy embroidery painting. Quat Dong paintings have been exported to Japan, South Korea, the US and others. I want Thuong Tin artisans to update technology science such as online marketing skills with a view to promote the traditional craft product resume."

Quat Don Embroidery Village is one of the traditional craft villages to be invested into developing for tourism in Hanoi by with a vision to 2030.

The city authorities are completing Master Plan for Developing Traditional Craft Villages in 2024 -2030 period, vision 2050. This is considered a 'leverage' creating conditions for craft villages to develop sustainably and reach out, associated with preserving traditional values and cultural identities of craft villages. It also contributes to increase income for labourers promoting local socio-economic development in the villages and Hanoi too.

"The craft village is a key sector in culture industry developing in Hanoi," said Nguyen Van Chi, head of Hanoi Rural Development Sub-Department. "The craft village preservation and development are one of important missions to promote economic and social development in localities. The craft village is a must-see spot to Vietnamese and foreign tourists when they visit the capital of Hanoi.

"Over the past years, Hanoi has paid attention to the craft village development policy which puts emphasis on craft training, and projects to support crafts development."

Quat Dong embroidery is famous for one-sided hand embroidered items portraying the country’s great personalities and beautiful landscape which are favoured by both domestic customers and foreign friends.

In the early stages, the village’s embroidery techniques were quite simple. Villagers often used naturally dyed colour threads, usually yellow, red, mauve, green and blue, to embroider distiches or decorative patterns on parasols and altar canopies and curtains.

As time went on, the embroidery craft continued to develop. In addition to ordinary coloured threads, embroiderers then used metallic threads and applied more complicated techniques to create ever more sophisticated embroidery patterns.

Today, apart from age-old embroidery techniques, Quat Dong artisans also apply more complicated ones such as double-sided embroidery. It is not an exaggeration to say that when looking at these intricate works, no one can find out where the needle work starts and the endpoint finishes, because all thread knots are completely hidden.

Due to its complexity, only skillful artisans can master this technique and double-faced embroidery paintings are considered valuable fine handicraft works.