Lụa và thêu tay · Silk & hand embroidery · Edition of 15
Scarf, hand-loomed silk
Lụa Hà Đông — the silk of Hà Đông: Vạn Phúc's cloth, loomed by hand a metre a day.
Vạn Phúc workshop
Reeled from the cocoon in the courtyard, twisted by hand, and loomed on one of the two wooden looms the family keeps behind the main street — a metre a day, the chrysanthemum figure their grandmother cut. Dyed in a small vat, so no two in the edition are quite the same.
The weight is the thing the powered looms cannot make: a scarf that falls rather than floats.
- Materials
- Mulberry silk, hand-reeled, plant-dyed
- Technique
- Hand-loomed on a wooden loom; damask figure
- Dimensions
- 180 × 55 cm · 70.9 × 21.7 in · 60 g
- Edition
- Edition of 15 · Signed and sealed
- Made
- Vạn Phúc, Hà Đông · 2026
The making
Three days on the loom, in four movements
The loom is the loudest thing in the house and the gentlest; the thread is made by hand before it ever reaches it.
I
The thread
Reeled from the cocoon and twisted by hand in the courtyard.
II
The warp
Threaded through the pattern cards for the chrysanthemum figure.
III
The loom
Three days of the wooden loom, a metre a day.
IV
The vat
Dyed in a small batch; dried in shade; the selvedge marked.
From the same village
