Đông Hồ

Đông Hồ lies on the south bank of the Đuống river, in the old Kinh Bắc country east of Hà Nội. Its prints were made for the lunar new year: a fat pig with a whorl on its flank, a carp leaping, children with a toad, the mouse wedding with its procession and its cat. In the last month of the lunar year the village held a market for prints alone, and traders carried them by boat and on shoulder poles across the delta. The pictures were cheap, cheerful and meant to be replaced every year.

The trade fell away in the twentieth century, as calendars and printed posters took over the walls. Most of the village now makes votive paper for burning at festivals. A few families have kept the blocks and the paper, and they print for collectors, museums and visitors more than for the Tết market. Some blocks in use are old and handed down; others are recut from old prints by the families who still carve.

In a good print the paper is the first thing to notice. Real dó paper coated in điệp has a faint sparkle when tilted to the light, and a slightly raised, grainy surface where the shell lies thick. The colours sit flat and a little chalky, never glossy, and each sits slightly off the next, because every colour is a separate block laid down by hand. The black line is crisp and goes on last. Prints on smooth white paper with bright synthetic colour are souvenirs, not Đông Hồ work.