A hat typically contains 34 to 50 leaf tips. The maker earns just VND2,000 or 3,000 profit per hat.
Early April is the loveliest time of year in the countryside around Hue . I could hear Hue music playing on the radio. The fields were at their most beautiful, with yellowish green rice plants quivering in the breeze. The aroma of young rice drifted over Tay Ho village, which lies on the banks of the Nhu Y River.
At the end of the road, I saw a woman carrying her baby in one arm, and wheeling a bicycle with the other. From the bike hung a few dozen conical hats. “Could you please show me the way to the house of Mrs. Tu Bon, the conical hat maker?” I asked.
Hue Conical hats
“Every family around here makes conical hats,” she replied. After some more conversation, she managed to point me in the right direction. The brick cottage was as poorly furnished as other houses in the village. Mrs. Tu Bon patched dried leaves onto a hat’s frame while she talked to Le Thi Dzien, a member of the local Women’s Association. Their conversation about sewing conical hats was occasionally interrupted by Mrs. Dzien’s loud laughter.
“You ask when people started to make Hue conical hats? Who knows?” Mrs. Dzien said that her 75-year-old dad had told her that her grandpa had also made conical hats.
In Tay Ho village, up to 80 percent of families still perform this traditional job. Today they produce three kinds of conical hats: la ke (ke leaf), three-layer hats and poem hats. Mrs. Tu Bon was making a la ke hat.
“A hat usually has 34 to 50 leaf tips, depending on whether the leaves are big or small,” explained Mrs. Tu Bon. “The hat must look shiny from afar, and looking out from under the hat in the sun, no needle holes should be visible. The thread seams should be regular, without bulges.”
Making conical hats is not easy. First, one must choose leaves of the same color so that the hat will have a uniform appearance. The most difficult stage is stringing the leaf tips together to fill the frame. “You must arrange the leaves cleverly so that the cone’s tip is small like this,” said Mrs. Tu Bon. She thrust a small steel wire into the hat’s tip to demonstrate its quality. “The thinner, the better and the more expensive, as dozens of stitches are exactly the same.”
Mrs. Dzien recalled how her mother had sewed conical hats. Her dad had bought bamboo and split it to form the brims and her mother had sewn the hats. Everybody in the family knew how to make conical hats. When she grew up and got married, her parents had given her nothing but a frame and a knife. Some girls might have gotten a pair of scissors in their humble dowry. The bride could choose her favorite frame to take with her.
At five in the morning we depart for the Dza Le Wholasale Market, which lies 5 km away from the village. The villagers receive VND 5,000 per hat, of which VND 2,000 to 3,000 is profit. A family earns about VND1 million for a month’s hard work.
Conical-hat-making is a long process. Cut leaves must be dried in the sun, then left out overnight to absorb dew. The leaves are ironed with a heated flat pan or a piece of iron. “It’s quite hard work, but we can still earn some money, and it is fun as the whole family works together,” said Mrs. Dzien. Recalling her late husband, who died recently, she smiled sadly. “I used to promise to buy candies for my children and cigarettes for my husband, and good food for the family each time I went to sell conical hats in Dza Le Market.”
In the past, this market used to open at three or four in the morning. A folk verse says: “Who goes to Thanh Toan roofed bridge, let me join you / Who visits Dza Le roofed bridge, take me along so that I can visit my husband’s home village.”
In those olden days, it was very common to see young Hue ladies in purple or green Ao Dai selling mussel rice or tofu in the street. Until the war was almost over, conical hat sellers often wore traditional dress too.
Poem hats demand even more skill than regular conical hats. This type of hat is usually made of xanh leaves, which are fan shaped. The big leaves are cut, tied up in bundles of ten, then trampled evenly, and heated over charcoal. After being dried on the coals, any unevenly dried leaves are removed. The dry leaves are aired overnight, then dipped in water before being opened, cut and ironed. The edges and veins are cut off before the pieces are strung together in layers, so that the rough side is unseen. Paper is inserted between the layers.
The maker cuts words and images into the outer layers so that, when the hat is held to the light, pictures and words are revealed. Popular decorations include an image of Trang Tien Bridge , the silhouette of a girl, or the poem: “Come to hue, (It) covers mens’ face after sunset, shelters women from rain”. Nowadays hardly anyone makes poem hats, as they take a huge amount of work and bring in only VND 15,000 each.
A famous song begins, “I send you a poem conical hat from Nghe An…” This song, said Mrs.Dzien, shows that conical hats were not originally made in Hue . As the capital city, Hue attracted fine wares from all over the country. Slender Hue girls modified their conical hats to be thinner and softer. They decorated them with poems, pictures and dried flowers.
Over time, conical hats became a symbol of the former capital city. Today, these hats are popular with tourists. Visitors buy these special hats as reminders of Hue ’s beauty and traditions.
Source: Vietnam Airlines Inflight Magazine.