The farmer's 'museum' of antiques

(Baonghean) - With his love and passion for ancient culture, Mr. Nguyen Duy Long - a farmer in Hamlet 9, Van Thanh Commune, Yen Thanh District has spent a lot of time and effort traveling everywhere to search for and collect antiques. Currently, his "museum" at home has thousands of valuable antiques.

Mr. Long and the porcelain lime pot from the Le dynasty.

After finishing high school, Nguyen Duy Long (born in 1971) stayed home, got married, and continued the farming career. In addition to a few acres of contracted rice fields, Long also raised livestock and poultry and sold them at the market to earn extra income. Thanks to his diligence and resourcefulness, his family's economy was better off than the average in the neighborhood.

Life was peaceful, but suddenly he "became ill" and neglected his work to collect antiques. He "burned" all his savings into this passion. The number of trips away from home to search for antiques increased, and after each trip, he brought back porcelain, ceramics, bronze..., some even broken in half or four.

Sitting next to a pot of tea brewed in a ceramic pot hundreds of years old, emitting a fragrant jasmine scent, Long said: Since childhood, he has loved the patterns and shapes of ancient ceramics, many times he used clay to practice molding them. Later, when he grew up, through books and the internet, he understood the priceless cultural values ​​of antiques, so his passion grew stronger over the years, urging him to search.

Since 2000, Long started hunting for local antiques, then traveled to provinces and cities across the country, even to remote ethnic minority areas to collect. Mr. Nguyen Duy Long shared: “Playing with antiques is also very difficult. At first, I was often deceived by brokers, buying fake items and losing tens of millions of dong. There were times when I traveled thousands of kilometers but when I got there, I did not like the item in person, or the owner suddenly changed his mind and did not sell it, which cost a lot of effort and money for the trip back and forth”…

Because of his love and passion for antiques, the couple often quarreled, "the rice was not good, the soup was not sweet". However, gradually, in the face of her husband's intense passion, Ms. Huong - Mr. Long's wife also changed her mind. Even now, when she goes far away to do business, if she hears that the item is an antique, she calls her husband to let him know so he can come buy it.

Visiting the farmer Nguyen Duy Long’s family, we were truly amazed by the ancient space that seems to have existed here for thousands of years. The entrance to the yard with hundreds of jars, earthenware jars, stone mortars, ceramic vases… dating back hundreds of years, arranged under bonsai trees of many years old, looks truly unique and impressive.

Inside the house, the tea cabinets, sofas, and glass cabinets display porcelain, ceramic, wooden, and bronze objects such as: teapots, bowls, vases, candlesticks, pedestals, basins, cups, jars, plates, boxes, vases, jars, urns, statues of all kinds... All are arranged in groups, according to different ages, very orderly and scientifically, looking like a real museum.

Miniature antique "museum" of Mr. Nguyen Duy Long.

Nguyen Duy Long's "museum" at home now has thousands of valuable antiques, dating back hundreds to thousands of years, such as pottery, stoneware from the ancient Vietnamese period, antiques from the Ly, Tran, Han, and Song dynasties... To understand, this passionate farmer had to study on his own, read many books on archaeology, sociology research books, books on history and the formation and development of ceramics in different countries. He said: "When you are truly passionate and diligent in researching, combined with experience, you can tell which era the ceramic belongs to just by looking at it. For example, during the Ly - Tran period, ceramics were brown and had lotus petal motifs.

Ly-Tran pottery has reached a peak in design and decoration… It is known that many valuable antiques of Mr. Long have been offered to buy at high prices by many antique collectors at home and abroad, but he still firmly refused. For him, collecting antiques is to satisfy his passion, to preserve the treasures of time, to preserve historical values, not for business purposes.

Mr. Long is concerned that there are many antiques among the people today, but there are few people who understand their precious value, are passionate about them and make an effort to collect and preserve them, so antiques are easily lost, damaged and "bleed out" abroad. Talking about his plans for the future, Long said: "I dream of building this place into a museum displaying antiques for many people to admire, contributing to preserving and conserving traditional cultural values ​​passed down to future generations."

Tien Dung