Biên Hòa

Potters had worked the clay along the Đồng Nai river for a long time before 1903, when the French colonial administration opened a school of applied arts in Biên Hòa. Its teachers, among them French ceramicists, worked alongside local potters and students. Together they developed a body of glazes from wood ash, copper and local minerals, and a style of carved decoration that drew on Vietnamese, Khmer and Cham motifs as much as on Art Deco. The school’s work went to exhibitions in Paris and Hà Nội in the early decades of the century.

The school still exists, now as a college of decorative arts, and Đồng Nai province still has many ceramic workshops, though most now make garden pots and large jars for export. Older Biên Hòa pieces from the first half of the twentieth century are collected seriously in Vietnam and abroad. A handful of studios continue to carve and glaze in the school’s manner, and the museum in the town keeps good examples.

Look first at the glaze. The famous Biên Hòa green, a copper colour that runs from sea-green to deep bronze, should be thick and slightly broken where it pools in the carving. Then look at the line. Good pieces are carved deeply and cleanly, with figures, lotus or dragons outlined and filled with separate colours that stay within their borders. The white ash glaze, used alongside the green, should look soft, almost like milk.