Lái Thiêu

Lái Thiêu grew up as a river town north of Sài Gòn, famous for its orchards as much as its kilns. Chinese potters, many of them Hakka and Teochew, settled here in the nineteenth century, drawn by good clay and by the river that carried their wares downstream to the markets. They built long climbing kilns and made what the south needed every day: rice bowls, plates, jars, teapots and the large glazed basins of the kitchen.

The best-known Lái Thiêu piece is the humble rooster bowl, a rooster brushed quickly in red, green and black beside a banana leaf or a peony. Generations of southern families ate from these bowls, and they are now collected for that reason. Today the old kilns have mostly moved or closed as the town has grown, and much production has shifted to larger factories in Bình Dương. A few family workshops still throw, brush and fire in the older way, and the town’s ceramic history is still easy to read in its streets and temples.

Look for confident, unfussy brushwork: a rooster painted in a few strokes by someone who has painted thousands. The glazes are bright but should not look printed. Turn a bowl over and you will often find an unglazed foot ring and a little roughness where it sat in the kiln. Slight unevenness in the rim, a drip of colour, a stacking mark inside the bowl are the signs of real use-ware, not faults.