(BNP) – Bac Ninh is not only famous for its soulful and sweet Quan Ho folk songs, but when visiting Kinh Bac, visitors can also explore and admire the beautiful and unique ceramic products at Phu Lang pottery village (Que Vo district) - a craft recognized as a National Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2016.
Coming to Phu Lang, we can easily see ceramic products of various shapes and colors arranged along village roads, alleys, and hamlets. In addition to household products such as jars, pots, and vats, Phu Lang ceramics are also used to decorate the interior and exterior of houses, house gates, village gates, and market gates.
Phu Lang ceramics have their own unique features, which are brown, dark brown, light yellow, and brown-yellow glazes, which are called eel-skin glazes by those in the pottery profession.
Each completed ceramic product goes through many stages from spreading the soil, shaping, cutting molds, drying, firing, and assembling, with the participation of many people. Phu Lang ceramic materials are made from the "bones" of red-pink soil taken from the Thong Vat and Cung Khiem regions (Bac Giang).
Under the skillful hands of craftsmen, the clay is refined to a very fine consistency, ensuring a certain degree of flexibility and smoothness, and is shaped on a turntable by hand or on a mold, into many different types of products, waiting for the product to shrink and then being glazed, then waiting for it to dry before being put into the kiln.
The highlight of Phu Lang ceramics is the use of the embossing method in the form of carving, also known as double carving, the glaze color is natural, durable and unique, the shape of the ceramic is rustic but strong, containing the pristine beauty of earth and fire, but still showing the virtuosity in sculpting and shaping.
Each stage is carefully and meticulously cared for by potters until a ceramic product is born and meets the standard of having an eel skin color or cockroach wing color, and when tapped, it must have a resonant sound, otherwise it will be rejected.
Currently, ceramic painting products are being developed and expanded according to the tastes of ceramic lovers. Visitors love this product and often buy it as a gift or to decorate their home, from small paintings to paintings of tens of square meters. Ceramic paintings are created with many diverse themes, rustic and simple, not too colorful, very suitable for decorating miniature gardens and decorating churches and temples.
Moreover, the themes in ceramic paintings always have many meanings for Vietnamese people, reminding them of their roots, homeland with the hardships and worries to have a glorious day like today...
To maintain and develop the craft village, many ceramic production establishments have proactively linked with travel agencies to bring tourists, students, and students to the locality to visit and experience the pottery making profession with artisans.
This is really a good sign, because experiential tourism, working with artisans in traditional craft villages is a new trend in promoting and promoting tourism in many localities. Moreover, this is also a way to preserve and conserve traditional cultural values, and at the same time, it is also a method in building new rural areas and integration today.
Source: https://bacninh.gov.vn/
