1,000 years, 1 pottery village
It is not that Bau Truc pottery village has an “immortal” appearance, standing outside the law of Formation - Duration - Destruction - Emptiness to be able to stand firm for nearly 1,000 years of history, witnessing the great changes of the Champa civilization. It only has the ability to transform itself to prolong and slow down the cycles.
However, that is enough to create valuable experiences to help traditional craft villages whose lives are increasingly fragile in the face of waves of industrialization, automation, high technology, and artificial intelligence in the manufacturing sector.
Bau Truc pottery village is located in the center of Phuoc Dan town, Ninh Phuoc district, Ninh Thuan province. Bau Truc in Cham language is Paley Hamu Trok, meaning "sunken village, protruding at the end of the river bank". The founder of Bau Truc pottery is Po K'long Chank, a close confidant of King Po K'long Giarai (1151 - 1205).
Nearly a thousand years ago, Po K’long Chank taught the people of Bau Truc how to take clay, mold it, and then fire it into household items. Pottery making here was formerly done mainly by women, while men did the heavier work of digging the clay, firing the pottery, and carrying the pottery or transporting it to sell, following the matriarchal system of the Cham people.
To this day, this tradition is still maintained. When girls grow up, they are taught how to make pottery by their mothers, and then “mothers pass it on to their children” for generations. However, the Cham people in Bau Truc consider Mr. Po K’long Chank as the founder of the pottery profession and they are descendants of Po, with 80% of the 400 households here making pottery.
Traditional ceramic products of Bau Truc pottery village are divided into two lines: Household products such as jars, stoves, pots, watertight jars... to serve people's lives and family activities; and spiritual products such as incense burners, incense burners, and worship items.
That is also the basic branching style that we can easily see in other traditional pottery villages such as Bat Trang, Chu Dau, Tho Ha... However, Bau Truc pottery still has its own unique characteristics such as, for example, traditional Bau Truc Cham pottery has red-yellow, pink-red colors, mixed with brown, gray-black streaks, which are typical colors crystallized from soil and water through firing and coloring with plant preparations.
The uniqueness of the products is very high and absolutely no industrial glaze is used. Bau Truc potters are often proud that only their product line literally sparkles with gold. Because any piece of pottery sparkles with light gold spots on the ceramic skin.
That is because the method of making Bau Truc pottery has its own style, and because the materials here have their own characteristics. The soil used to make pottery is not pure clay but a mixture of clay mixed with young sand taken from streams flowing upstream. That sand contains a lot of placer minerals, so when fired at 600 - 800 degrees Celsius, other minerals will disappear, leaving only placer gold (gold nuggets) mixed in the pottery skin.
The clay for making pottery is taken from Hamu Nulank field. After taking the clay layer below, the potter will cover the top layer of soil for planting. In about 1.5 years, the lost clay layer will be replenished by the alluvium in the Quao River. This is a great advantage in terms of raw materials for Bau Truc pottery. Sand is also taken from the Quao River and streams flowing into the river. Then both the soil and sand are stored, waiting for use.
The transformation of Bau Truc pottery
When aluminum and plastic appeared, it was also the time when the death knell for ceramic household products rang. Heavy, fragile, not durable, inconvenient, and expensive, ceramic utensils were "clinically dead" because they could not compete with aluminum pots and plastic buckets.
However, Bau Truc pottery village still survives the storms to find ways to adapt. The reason Bau Truc pottery can do this is first of all because it knows how to rely on its ethnic roots. The Cham people, regardless of the time, still prefer to use Bau Truc pottery products for their spiritual activities, and absolutely do not replace them with anything else.
From the coming of age ceremony of girls, to the Cham people's Kate Festival or funerals, weddings... they all use Bau Truc pottery. This spiritual and cultural support has given Bau Truc pottery a very solid foundation to survive, just like the Cham towers that defy time.
In addition, because the clay source needs time to recover, Bau Truc ceramic products are also intended to be produced on a scale to serve the community. Therefore, the sustainable chain of Bau Truc ceramics is very difficult to break. Making ceramics is as "natural" as growing rice or raising livestock.
The traditional production method of Bau Truc pottery also reinforces this durability. Bau Truc potters do not need a wheel to create shapes but use their hands to knead the clay, understanding and feeling the quality of the clay through each movement to create a solid, balanced ceramic structure like 1,000 years ago.
This pottery making technique is popularly described as “working by hand, turning with the butt” because the potter walks backwards, catching each clump of clay, pressing with the inside hand and rubbing with the outside hand, transforming the lifeless, lifeless clay into unique, original pottery products imbued with Cham culture.
They also do not need to build a kiln but still fire pottery outdoors with firewood, straw, and rice husks, leaving all success or failure to the sun, rain, and weather. This requires attention to the progress of the fire as well as the reckless improvisation of both humans and nature. In return, Bau Truc pottery does not depend on technology or fuel prices.
However, Bau Truc pottery also has major changes to survive strongly in the new era. They maintain the spiritual product line, reduce the civilian product line and add new experiences with the construction ceramic product line, interior decoration and fine art ceramic.
Construction ceramics do not mean building materials such as bricks and tiles, but works that serve to "decorate" large spaces such as statues, reliefs, interior accessories, miniature landscapes with all sizes according to requirements, for decorative purposes for large architectural works or on the scale of gardens, houses, rooms...
Typical products such as Cham tower models, statues of gods Brahma, Vinhus, Shiva, especially the statue of goddess Apsara, the symbol of Bau Truc pottery, are very popular, besides common products such as flower vases, water jars, lampshades, ceramic lamps, decorative watertight jars...
Although handcrafted, all are highly artistic with meticulousness and sophistication in each carving. The decorative patterns on Bau Truc pottery are carved or embossed lines imbued with Champa culture, but the craftsmen hardly need drawings, they freely pour their souls into each carving.
At the same time, Bau Truc pottery village also transformed its pottery craft, including: Traditional methods, artisans, products, production processes, production operations... into tourism products to serve tourists. This is probably the most innovative change.
Previously, although 80% of households in Bau Truc pottery village participated in making pottery, there was no showroom displaying products like in Bat Trang or Tho Ha. The whole village only had one showroom located in the communal house managed by village chief Dang Chi Quyet.
But now, in addition to family pottery workshops, any household with the means has opened its own showroom to display products and welcome tourists. They are willing to demonstrate the traditional pottery shaping technique in the interesting and unique way of “hand-kneading, butt-turning”. This is also a strong tourism product, bringing economic benefits and introducing the quintessence of their nation.
It can be said that with the direction of tourism of pottery products and the creation of new product lines suitable to market needs, Bau Truc pottery has created new values. This novelty does not eliminate traditional values but goes hand in hand to complement each other, relying on tradition to create added value.
Soil, sand, straw fire, thousand-year-old methods, indigenous culture, intangible culture, traditional spiritual culture... all create momentum for Bau Truc pottery village and the pottery profession - a type of intangible cultural heritage recognized by UNESCO - to have a new vitality.
