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Dong Ho is a famous trade village of Vietnam that specialises in drawing folksy paintings. In the old days, the village had the name of Mai and was a small village lying beside the southern bank of Duong River's dike, about 30 kilometres far from the capital Ha Noi to the east.
Today, the village still preserves the most ancient heritages of Kinh Bac area. One of them is the tradition of making paintings on ‘uneven paper' which seems convexo-concave and is made from rahmnoneuron tree by filtering and flattening it. The colours used in painting are taken from natural materials like half-baked brick, leaves, or tree roots by firing and grinding them. In order to have sparkling background colour, the painters burn shells into lime, crush them into powder, mix with tree's resin and then spread them onto ‘uneven paper' to make them original.
The paintings of Dong Ho Village are not drawn by the artistic inspiration but people use plank to print blocks on it. To get blocks that reach the high level of cleverness, it requires having a painter draw a sample. People who draw sample paintings and blocks need to have love for arts, a soul of an artist, and especially high level of technical skill. The last stage, printing out the paintings, seems not to be so difficult since everyone can spread colours on the plank and then print it out.
After the paintings are printed out or even when they are dried, the viewers can still feel the colours that are as fresh as when the paintings are wet. The cubes and the bits are place in harmony naturally. The colours used in printing usually come from the nature: black colour is taken by burning bamboo's leaves and taking its ashes; green colour is from the husk and leaves of cajuput trees; yellow colour comes from sophora flowers; red colour originates from the trunk and root of ‘vang trees'; white colour is got from ‘diep' (a kind of shellfish); etc. In these years, some people when printing pictures have used modern colours and chemical substances. By that way, the quantity of products is increased due to saving time by using artificial colours. Though, the colour quality is not as fresh and sharp as traditional paintings.
Furthermore, the colours made from chemical will be faded away quickly only after a short time.There was a time folksy paintings Dong Ho were forgotten, so the profession has been declining. Many trading households left making paintings aside and changed to produce votive paper. For these years, people at Dong Ho Village have come back with their original profession because they realised the beauty of the simple and faithful paintings in Dong Ho that are integral for Vietnamese daily life, especially Tet holidays.
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