The Radiant Lacquer Art of Southern Vietnam

Moonlight glimmers across Ha Long Bay in Nguyễn Văn Hớn’s 1950 lacquer painting. The surface is perfectly flat and polished, with a deep black night surrounding limestone peaks that seem to emit their own light. The work feels remarkably modern, yet its age is part of its power.

That sense of time runs through “Chu tất bình dân,” an exhibition of nearly 200 objects from the collections of Huyền Đức Book Company and Phạm Hoàng Quân. On display at the Southern Women’s Museum through October 4, 2026, the show includes tea boxes, flower vases, decorative plates, screens, furniture, jewelry boxes and wall paintings. These objects were made for ordinary life, but they carry the confidence of a highly developed craft.

The exhibition grew from Phạm Hoàng Quân’s more than decade-long effort to collect lacquerware produced in Thủ Dầu Một and Saigon between 1950 and 1990. The collection now covers more than 140 workshop and artisan names, offering an almost complete view of southern Vietnam’s lacquerware during what the exhibition presents as its most brilliant period.

The word “bình dân,” or popular and everyday, opens a different way of looking at lacquer. Beauty here does not belong only to works by famous artists. It also appears in household objects, where artisans invested technique, experience and professional pride. The exhibition presents the culture surrounding the craft as well, including the lacquer artisans’ founders’ ceremony on the 13th day of the sixth lunar month and gatherings that introduced workers such as Chín Minh, a lacquer craftsman, Huyền Thanh, a shell inlayer, and painter Nguyễn Quang Sơn.

The collection also reveals the range of techniques once mastered by southern lacquer artisans. A 1990s painting from the Lam Sơn workshop shows an advanced eggshell-inlay method. Using only black and white, artisans depict three women playing the tỳ bà beside a tea set. After repeated layers of lacquer, sanding and polishing, the rough eggshell fragments become softly graded, giving the faces, clothing and hands depth and a distinctly Vietnamese character.