Son Dong village blow soul into the wood

About 15km from the center of Hanoi, the traditional village of Son Dong (Hoai Duc - Hanoi) is known as a place to preserve and develop the cultural quintessence in sculpture art of our country.

Son Dong commune has more than 1,500 households, every household has at least one person who knows wood carving, lacquer. Along with the traditional craft carving, engraving and painting statues to create the famous products in the country such as Buddha statue thousand hands, thousand eyes; Mr. Thien, he evil, the statue of the Arhat, palanquin bowl, Son Dong also have worshiped gilded gold paintings can not be compared anywhere. The material used by Son Dong villagers to make self-sacrificing altarpiece is wood, jackfruit and heartwood. These wood must comply with certain rules and standards to be used, so the quality of the place is always guaranteed, life is always longer than the products of other places. Particularly, the wood must be made of jackfruit wood: the jackfruit tree to carve the statue, the sticky branches, the leaves in the wood, no one dared to bring wood to make the bed. In the spirit-filled workshop with a large series of statues made of wood jackfruit, Nguyen Ba Quy - who has 30 years experience wood blowing affirms: "This job does not need a" birth sample, "since we have been working on it since we were young. New to the profession to take clay with sawdust and sawdust, plastic training for statues, when the image of the statues in the head and then learn to sculpt the statue on wood. Must understand the Buddha's new soul. Now I can make a statue without pictures, just think in my head and do it. " According to Quy, younger generations now have more favorable conditions for learning, but it also takes them 2 years to master their hands and take many years to soak up the souls of Buddha statues. The church must have enough elements: metal - wood - water - fire - earth. In which, the needle is yellow in the statue, the wood is the water, the water is beautiful, the fire is used in the production process, before finishing a statue, artisans must use the land to plaster, "Unreal fruitless" is so. Mr. Quy said: "Where do not know, Son Dong still retain the craftsman sculpture, just like that to put the worker's mind into the statue. "The eyes have not seen the object, but the spirit of the hand that is out" - a general sentence, but the mind and talents of artists Son Dong village.