Mây tre cói đan · Rattan, bamboo & sedge · Edition of 6
Lidded vessel, rain pattern
Mây tre đan — rattan and bamboo split by hand and woven; the rain pattern is a counted diagonal that cannot be corrected once wrong.
Trần Thị Mai
Rattan split along its length into strands a millimetre wide, soaked, scraped and dried in the courtyard sun, then woven in the diagonal the village calls rain: a pattern that is counted rather than seen, and that cannot be put right once a count is missed.
Mai makes the lid first, because the lid decides everything. It closes with a small sound. The vessel will hold what you ask of it — bread, thread, letters — and will darken from honey to amber over the years.
- Materials
- Hand-split rattan, bamboo rim, natural finish
- Technique
- Rain pattern (vân mưa), counted weave
- Dimensions
- 28 × 28 × 34 cm · 11 × 11 × 13.4 in · 0.9 kg
- Edition
- Edition of 6 · Signed and sealed
- Made
- Phú Vinh, Chương Mỹ · 2026
The making
Five weeks, from cane to lid
Nothing in Phú Vinh is fast. The cane dries for days before the weaving starts, and the weaving is a count held in the hands for hours at a time.
I
The cane
Rattan split by knife along the fibre, soaked, scraped and dried in the sun until it bends without memory.
II
The lid
Made first. Its count sets the count of the body; if the lid is wrong, nothing fits.
III
The body
Woven from the base upward in the rain diagonal, one strand over, two under, counted aloud.
IV
The rim
Bamboo bent and bound to the body with the last of the cane; the vessel is left a week to settle.
From the same village
