Hội Án’s arts and crafts scene is completely different than Hà Nội’s. Hà Nội presents as a typical capital city, collating handicrafts from all over Vietnam, while Hội Án offers a more local perspective and a fascinating specialty.

Cloth Shops

We had read before coming to Hội Án that it was renowned for its custom tailoring shops, but that foreknowledge didn’t prepare us by half for the reality. I counted 15 tailors, cloth shops in the local parlance, on a random single block in the Old Town. Estimates tag the number of cloth shops in Hội Án at 400-500.

So we’re clear, these are not alteration shops, which is what tailor means in the US now. These are craftsmen who make custom fit clothes to order. You go in, pick a silhouette, pick fabric, get measured, and specify details. This was exactly Dorothy’s model for her shop, Bespoke, except she was one-of-one in St. Louis, not one-of-500. Bespoke felt so much on an island, it was weird to come to a place with literally hundreds of similar shops.

While they are most densely concentrated in the Old Town, there are cloth shops in every neighborhood in Hội Án. They come in all sizes, from Walmarts to MiniMarts.

The store displays featured eye-melting designs to capture attention, but I didn’t see anyone walking around in the fancy clothes. I did see lots of couples and families in outfits made with the same fabric, which is… a look. It’s pretty clear people come from far and wide to have clothes made here.

I bought two cuts of fabric in Hà Nội, which I brought to our neighborhood cloth shop to have made into shirts. The cost for making a shirt from my fabric in the Old Town was VND 700,000, about $27 USD. It was only VND 300,000 from our neighbors, a little more than $11. It was delivered, perfectly executed, the next day. I had them make both shirts and two pair of pull-on linen pants. I know I have Dorothy on staff, but she has plenty lined up for her return home. No need to pile on, at those prices.

Leather Shops

Like the cloth shops, the leather shops range in size from Mega to Mini. They are ubiquitous, Hội Án’s second most common shop, after the cloth shops. Also like the cloth shops, but less immediately obvious, most of the leather shops are make-to-order. You can buy off the rack, but you can also specify sizes, features, and finishes for shoes, bags, purses…

Neither of us craved leather, so we didn’t indulge. But there were some truly vivid colors on offer, so there was at least some temptation. If I’d seen any exotic leather I might have tipped over, but we wound up empty handed.

Pottery

Terracotta pottery is a big deal here. Thanh Hà Pottery Village is pretty much nothing but, and even features the Thanh Hà Terracotta Park, which is an oddly named museum. There’s an admission to get into the pottery village, which is not unusual. Monetizing high value tourist locations just makes sense.

The village had large public installations and small shops. Truthfully, while the terracotta was beautiful, it didn’t sing to us. We were ceramics sluts all throughout Mexico and North Africa, but it’s so hard to bring that stuff back safely. So, (almost) no terracotta for us.

The museum is called a Terracotta Park for a reason. The grounds, which are beautiful on their own account, are generously appointed with terracotta sculptures, most of them scale model (although not, I think, all to a consistent scale) reproductions of famous buildings. For reasons unarticulated.

The inside-the-museum part of the museum featured massive reliefs, made for the site, as well as more traditional sculptures.

This is one of my favorite restroom signs ever. So very straightforward.

Of course, we did pick up one bowl on our trip to the Pottery Village, from the museum gift shop. It’s not our fault. It was very brightly colored.

Ceramics

On the whole, we found Hội Án, as we did the rest of Vietnam, a little light on ceramics. For our taste. But like Siem Reap, we located one shop, outside the Old Town and in our neighborhood, whose aesthetic resonated. That’s all it takes.

We picked up a few things at Thành Thị Pottery, but kept thinking about what we’d left behind, so we went back in our final week to complicate our packout. Which desperately needed more ceramics.

And… loot!

Embroidery

Bamboo

This wasn’t a thing so much as a guy. His workshop, Taboo Bamboo, is outside the city center, about 15 minutes from our apartment. He does the thing here where you can make a souvenir for yourself with professional guidance, but we’re way more interested in what the hands of a master can accomplish than the awkward, pale shadow we’d be able to grunt out.

This may have been the most impressive thing we’ve seen in all of Vietnam. His major pieces were four feet, six feet, eight feet long, and longer. Yet they were designed and built with the compulsive attention you’d lavish on a miniature. The contrast between the massive scale and the obsessive detail was mind-blowing.

The large pieces were incredible, and it was gutting to know that we could never get one home. But we certainly enjoyed their company while we were there.

Maybe we couldn’t have the major piece we craved, but he had smaller pieces that we’d be able to wedge into luggage. We came away with this guy, maybe 7″ long. What could possibly go wrong?

Coconut Paper

We stumbled across this little shop just a few blocks from our apartment on an evening stroll. It presents as a lantern shop, even so far as offering workshops where you can make your own souvenir lantern. These places are like kudzu in the Old Town, all hawking the same cheap, manufactured tourist goods. But, like the ceramics shop, you sometimes have to get out of the tourist area to find the gold.

I’ll confess that I was captivated by the ubiquitous silk lanterns (because I am very shallow). We have ecru rice paper lanterns in our Chicago apartment, and I thought a handful of the Vietnamese lanterns would be an upgrade. Dorothy disabused me of this notion, pointing out that the lanterns were one of the only places the eye could rest in our space, and that the apartment didn’t really need more color.

Thankfully, we found Dé Lantana. While they offered some of the traditional silk lanterns, mostly they used them as armature for their handmade coconut papers. Some of those papers just had coconut fibers as texture, but others had patterns from organic to geometric, and even portraiture.

We’ll make our own pendants by wrapping the paper over a plastic tube. They’ll be beautiful and loaded with terroir, without being gaudy and cheap. Everyone wins.

Random Acts Of Art

Quilling

Well, here’s a thing we didn’t even know existed. Quilling, or paper filigree, involves cutting, rolling, and gluing paper to make what amounts to 3D collage. We stopped at the Happy Smile Quilling shop and were beguiled. Craftsmen were quilling right before our eyes, and were delighted to stop and explain what they were doing. For our part, we were delighted to leave with one of their pieces.

Woodworking

There weren’t dozens of these woodworkers, but they were a recurring motif. You could hear their hammers striking chisels from around the corner, so they were easy to find.

Graphic Design

I usually include a selection of signage and graphic design in the Crafts posts, but the pickings seemed slim here. Still, I’m happy to offer up a tasty package of Fullo Blastos.