Missing the conical hat making profession of Dong Van

Love story of conical hat village

According to the elderly in Dong Van commune, the hat-making profession appeared here in the 50s of the last century. During the resistance war against France, many wounded soldiers were transferred from the front to Tai Lam (Dong Van) for recuperation. Wounded soldier Tran Van Tuy, from Quang Trach, Quang Binh, was assigned by his unit to live with Mrs. Dau Thi Thiet.

The bustling atmosphere of hat making in Dong Van in previous years. Photo: Huy Thu

At that time, life was still difficult, but Mrs. Thiet's family devoted themselves to caring for the wounded soldier. Thanks to that, Tuy's health quickly recovered. Every day, he often helped his family chop firewood, clean up...

Feeling that the Tai Lam people depend on the fields all year round, but their lives are still poor, without a side job, one time when he returned home on leave, he brought with him a hat mold and bundles of white conical leaves. He enthusiastically instructed Mrs. Thiet and her children on how to make hats. Thanks to her skillful hands and diligence, Mrs. Thiet's daughter, Tran Thi Nam, learned quite quickly and was able to sew beautiful Ba Don-style hats herself.

The most important material for making conical hats is the leaves. Photo: Huy Thu

After recovering, Tuy reluctantly left Tai Lam to go to war, when the love between the wounded soldier and the village girl was at its peak. Nam sent her lover off to the front, pouring her love and longing into her hat-making work.

Ms. Nam's hats sold out as soon as they were made. Ms. Thiet and her son sold the conical hats at Dung market, Rang market, etc. Not only taking care of her career and expanding her family's economy, Ms. Nam also happily passed on her craft to the villagers.

A common 15-brim hat mold. Photo: Huy Thu

From an initial hat mold, after a short time, many villages in Tai Lam had hundreds of households making hats. The hat making profession brought income to many families. Hats were taken to the market, bringing rice, clothes, necessities home, as gifts for relatives, helping many villages in Dong Van overcome poverty and educate their children.

After completing his military service and returning to Tai Lam, disabled soldier Tran Van Tuy married Ms. Nam and voluntarily lived and settled in his wife's hometown for a long time. He was very happy because the riverside countryside had developed.hosierylike his hometown in Quang Binh. In 1963, his family moved to a new land across the Lam River to settle down, but the "Love story of the conical hat village" is still circulated in Dong Van to show gratitude to the war invalid who brought the conical hat craft to the village.

Dong Van conical hats are sold at Dung market (Thanh Chuong). Photo: Huy Thu

Old profession fades away

Arriving at Loc Xuan hamlet, Dong Van commune on the first day of March, it is not difficult to find Ms. Nguyen Thi Huong (56 years old) - the only hat maker in the hamlet. Ms. Huong shared that she has known how to make hats since she was 13 or 14 years old. Her family has many siblings, parents and 7 sisters in the house, all know how to make hats.

Ms. Nguyen Thi Huong has been involved in hat making for decades. Photo: Huy Thu

After returning from the South to work for a company, she has been involved in the hat-making profession for over 20 years. Along with farming and raising pigs, the hat-making profession has helped her build a small house and send her children to school.

According to Ms. Huong, Dong Van hats are made from palm leaves, bamboo shoots, and bamboo. The palm leaves are bought from traders who bring them from the forests and mountains of Ha Tinh and Quang Binh. Before making the hats, the palm leaves are heated and pressed flat on a heated plow. Bamboo is split to make the brim, shaved evenly, and bent into a round shape. Each medium-sized hat requires 15 brims. To make a hat, it must go through many stages, such as attaching a mold, stringing leaves, sewing, weeping, stringing, oiling, and drying in the sun.

The stage is to heat the conical leaves on the plow blade until they are flat. Photo: Huy Thu

To make a beautiful hat, in addition to the requirement of white leaves and even brims, the craftsman must be skillful and gentle in needlework. The work is not hard but requires the skill, meticulousness and diligence of the woman. Every day of concentration, she will complete a hat, selling it for 65,000 VND, after deducting expenses, she earns about 50,000 VND. Her beautiful hats are famous, whatever she makes, people come to buy, no need to take them to the market.

In Dong Van now, professional hat makers like Ms. Huong are very rare. Only a few hamlets still keep the profession, the most crowded hamlet has 5-7 people. Previously, every commune and hamlet had hat makers. In the 80s of the 20th century, hat making here developed strongly, every family did the job, and hat making was seen everywhere.

Making a conical hat requires many steps. Photo: Huy Thu

In the memories of the Dong Van people, the conical hat making profession was once bustling, working day and night. At night, around the flickering oil lamps placed on bamboo tripods, young people, women, and the elderly gathered around to compete in sewing conical hats. Early in the morning, mothers and sisters carried hats to Dung market, Ro market, Dinh market... to sell to people, import to department stores, and in the afternoon they were busy sewing again. In the mid-90s, the conical hat profession began to decline, the whole commune had only a few dozen households following the profession, and now the number of people doing the profession can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

Currently, Tien Quanh hamlet is the hamlet with the largest number of hat makers in the commune, about 7-8 people, mainly middle-aged and elderly people. Ms. Tran Thi Loan (54 years old) - a famous hat maker here shared: "The hat making profession does not bring in high income, if you work steadily, it is only enough to cover the essential expenses for the family, therefore, fewer and fewer people are doing this profession.

Many families in Dong Van no longer make conical hats, but are keeping the conical hat molds as souvenirs. Photo: Huy Thu

The difficulty of the hat making profession now is not the problem of product consumption, but the source of hat leaf material is too rare, only occasionally do traders bring hat leaf back to sell, only those who order and store it will have the material to make it.

The lack of raw materials combined with low income and elaborate sewing have made people lose interest in the profession. Those who still practice the profession here also work irregularly, sometimes with work, sometimes without. Many famous hat-making families in the area have put away their molds and hats for decades.

In recent times, although the locality has had activities to encourage the profession, such as vocational training, skill competitions, etc., it seems that it has not been able to preserve the decline of the hat-making profession in Dong Van. The fear of losing a famous craft village on the banks of Lam Giang River is present with many worries and regrets.

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