Ancient has it that the founder of Ha Dong silk was a woman from Hangchou (China) following her husband to Vietnam and settled at Van Phuc village – Ha Dong

Missing her homeland, she spent all her heart in silk weaving. Generation after generation, Van Phuc has become the longest handmade silk area in Vietnam.

To make each meter of HD silk, the artisans has implemented a complicated production process, including selecting silk cord, twist very thin silk threads together, glue silk to weaving, dyeing ..etc

Growing mulberry, breeding silkworm, unravelling cocoon

Growing mulberry and breeding silkworm requires careful labor: select good silkworm breed, feeding with mulberry especially 7 days before making cocoon, it needs 12 people to pick up mulberry days and nights to supply enough for them to produce good cocoon.

Those cocoons are sunk into water at 40-45oC. And then the artisans unravel cocoon to very transparent thin, delicate and fragile silk thread.

          Feeding silkworm with mulberry             Silkworm cocoon                 Silkworm cocoon

Fabric weaving and dyeing

Delicate silk yarns before threading into loom are underway of reeling, spinning, glueing to enhance silk durability and shininess.

Weaving process requires tight cross-criss between horizontal and vertical silk yarns to create patterns striking as designed. Those patterns are stylized from familiar images related to Vietnamese culture, tradition and custom, standing out bamboo, peach, cherry blossom ... Especially, the design on HD silk are mixed with Symbol Longlife, double happiness with implying immortal happiness. Particularity of HD silk is iridescent based on light effect.

           Reeling                                         Spinning                                           Threading into loom

Dyeing is crucial to make HD silk colors coming out vivid and sparkling. The process takes time and requires skillfulness: washing, cleansing impurity in silk, making up colors in boiled water and dyeing. Dyeing and washing are repeated several times until colors come out correctly and nicely.

Hanging dyed silk is the last step, which depends on weather. The artisans need to watch weather carefully. When it’s sunny, they have to turn up and down the fabric all the time to make sure colors are even. Nowadays, they can be supported by the kiln when it’s rainny but colors when drying natural still kept its own delicateness and shininess.