Vietnamese Embroidery Art 

In Western countries, the term hand embroidery reminds you of a lady, sitting by a foyer, for her leisure time, using a big needle and a large roll of thread to make a rather small picture, such as a simple deer, rabbit or flower. The Vietnamese hand broidery for long years ago was similar, but usually the Vietnamese used a tiny thread to make the picture more solid and better colored.

Embroidery is a 700-year-old Tradition in Vietnam where it is passed on from generation to generation and its finesse and quality showed in the almost real creations depicting complex design and details. Hand embroidery in Vietnam from long time ago has been among the popular extra-curriculum activities in high school for young girls together with cooking and cloth sewing. It was a part of the Vietnamese culture. The girls in family ought to know how to decorate a pillowcase, a curtain, a table cover with hand embroidery. 

Some teen girls, instead of watching TV or playing around like now, embroidered 2 special names with her heart and soul on a handkerchief for her lover. Since 1960's, hand embroidery in Vietnam has been raised to the level of an art. Many large pictures in different sizes, some as large as 2.5x2 yards, have been made with the splendid tiny thread. Seeing yourself those masterpieces of artwork, you can tell how magnificent the art that the Vietnamese has been developed with the tiny thread in hands. 

The Vietnamese Hand Embroidery has brought a new way of expression of the oriental culture. Any topic can be expressed with hand embroideries. If you search the web or visit some Vietnamese Embroidery Art Galleries (for example, at CamTu Embroidery), you may find more than 500 different topics varying from the history (the Vietnamese used to pride with their 4000 years long history) to the picturesque in Viet Nam and around the world, from the wild lives such as tigers, dragon, birds, flowers (roses, orchids), to the religions (Christianity, Buddhism, Taoism). 

Together with other art works such as painting or sculpture, the Vietnamese Hand Embroidery can be a new way of decoration in house, in office or even in a large hall or in conference room. It can be a cultural gift to show a new, unique art from a Far East country, Vietnam. In the painting, the artist uses a paintbrush with different colors to make a picture. 

In hand broidery, the artist, usually a pretty girl, patiently, skillfully and carefully selects each tiny thread with different colors and shades. In some pictures, she may use up to 500 different colors and threads spread on to a huge cloth material to make a piece of art. 

She cannot do fast as a painter even when she is in hurry. In most of the cases, it takes a few months for a person to perform on a piece. Some big master pieces could take more than a year of work by several artists. The work requires much more patience than in painting and sculpting. 

It is even harder in the 3-dimension hand embroidery. The surface of the picture is raised up at different levels to the need to make picture like real. Painting cannot do it unless you use wood sculpture. And wood sculpture rarely shows the exquisite colors and details. This is the unique technique you may not find anywhere else in the world of this type of art.