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For as long as I can recall, I have held in my heart a deep and enduring love for authentic Vietnamese culture \u2014 not for what gets laboriously placed before the tourist’s gaze in travel books and museum exhibits but for the culture itself, embedded in daily existence, in the weathered lines of objects, in the unobtrusive pulse of Vietnamese everyday routine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What has attracted me are the things worn by time, not just for the sake of nostalgia, but because I believe that in the turmoil of modern life, only the old, the frayed, and the familiar can slow us down, providing us a breath of quiet, a moment to collect ourselves and remember who we are. To me, tradition isn’t past, but present. It lingers in the scent of aging wood, in the yellow enamel bowls that in other times had served the past generations, in grandmothers’ passed-down lullabies. It is there inthese tiny, unspoken shards that the power of our culture persists gently, strongly, authentically. This is the kind of beauty I strive for: not blinding but abiding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In searching for the restrained beauty of conventional arts, I remained in place for a very long while before the artwork of s\u01a1n m\u00e0i <\/em>\u2014 Vietnamese lacquer. It is a material where hands, time, and Vietnamese spirit subtly entwine. It is less ostentatious and flashythan silk and ceramics are prone to be. And yet, it has its own soft, insistent way of caressing the observer lightly, but strongly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n