Làng Sình

Sình is the local name for Lại Ân, a village on the Hương river a short way downstream from Huế. For around four hundred years it has printed the figures used in household and village rituals: guardian spirits, the kitchen god, horses and elephants for the ancestors, paper clothing and the symbolic stand-ins that are offered in place of the living. The print is placed on the altar, the prayer is said, and the paper is burned so that it reaches the other world. Very few old prints survive for that reason; the woodblocks are the archive.

The craft came close to vanishing in the twentieth century as rituals changed and cheap printed paper arrived. It was revived by a small number of families who kept the blocks and the knowledge of colour, and the prints are now also made as pictures to keep, alongside the ritual work. The busiest time is the run-up to Tết, when households across the Huế region renew their altars. The village is also known for its wrestling festival early in the lunar new year.

A good Sình print has a clean, confident black line and colour laid on quickly by brush, slightly outside the line in places. The palette is small and warm: reds, yellows, greens and black. The paper should be soft dó, not machine card. Look for the slight variation from sheet to sheet that hand colouring gives.