Chu Đậu

Chu Đậu stands on the plain of Hải Dương, on waterways that once led to the sea. From the fourteenth to the sixteenth century its kilns made blue-and-white and polychrome ceramics in great quantity: dishes, bottles, jarlets, ewers and figures, painted in cobalt under a clear glaze. The wares were shipped across Southeast Asia and beyond, to the Middle East and Japan. Wars and the closing of the trade ended the kilns, and the village returned to farming. For centuries the pottery was known abroad but its origin was not.

Archaeologists identified the kiln sites in the 1980s, and a wreck off the central coast later yielded a large cargo of Chu Đậu wares. Around 2001 a workshop was established to revive the craft, studying shards from the fields and the museum pieces to recover the clay, the cobalt and the painting. Today the village produces new work in the old manner alongside reproductions of the classic forms, much of it for buyers in Vietnam and abroad.

The old Chu Đậu blue is soft and slightly greyish, not the hard, bright blue of later porcelain, and the glaze has a warm, ivory tone. Painting is quick and confident: peonies, lotus, fish, birds and scrolling vines drawn with few strokes. The body is heavier than Chinese porcelain and often shows a darker foot ring where the glaze stops. In new work, look for the same freedom of brush. Stiff, stencilled painting is a sign of hurry.