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| [Note Guidelines] Photographer's Note |
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Many people who don’t make nón believe that the process of conical hat making is so simple and easy. This concept prompts them to guess a wrong way of drying palm leaves.
Dinh Anh Travel described that, “To make a conical hat, a hat maker chooses young palm leaves and lets them be dried under the sunshine.”
Anuar Ahmad agreed, “To make a conical hat, a hat maker chooses young palm leaves that have been dried under continued sunshine.”
Lucky that I found one source accurate, “Firstly she picks whole, fresh palm leaves and dries them by a cooking fire. Sound simple? It’s actually tricky, as the leaves must be dry but retain their original colour.” (VietnamNet)
Here you can see the worker places new and fresh leaves onto the kiln while the previous batch has been hung up above for additional soft heat for continuous drying process. This technique is gentle and requires professional experience. Like preparation of a dish of beefsteak for a difficult customer who orders medium cooking: you can not serve him with well-done or rare steak. Under-processed leaves won’t last long under sunshine, and over-processed leaves will take off its original green color and turn the new hat into a “used-hat" appearance.
The village Phú Cam where this photo has been shot is associated with nón making for over half century. Please refer to the following text for more details. Thanks.
Hat-making village Phú Cam (also Phước Vĩnh) lies on the southern bank of the An Cựu River in the centre of the former imperial capital of Hue. It's a village famous for its traditional way of making conical hats for hundreds of years.
Phú Cam -made hats look graceful, soft and thin as silk. Huế landscapes or even poems can be seen clearly through the hats in the sunshine. It takes woman much time to make the frame and iron leaves before young girls start sewing. The beauty and grace of a hat depend much on the frame (made of 16 brims from the hem to the top). Artisans use sharp knives to prepare the brims and make the frame that needs skills, techniques and experiences, as well as mathematical calculations which have been handed down for generations.
Leaves to make hat play a vital part, leaves have to be blue-white, neither too young nor too old. Collected leaves are to be put to dry in the sun, put to be moistened by dewdrops, and then to be ironed flat on a steel- plank above a kiln, cleaned with a towel. After all this, leaves are cut to fit the frame.
How to arrange the leaves on to the frame is not easy. Each hat needs 50 leaves and between the leaves are colored papers with pictures or paintings of landscapes, or even poems. Hat-makers are hardworking, careful, and diligent. Hats are served with silk-threads and the chin-straps are made of colored silk (black, white, yellowish, purple, violet...) to harmonize with Huế climate and beauty.
Poem-hat is a distinctive feature of culture in Huế. Locals say they like to do the job not only to earn money but to preserve their age-old tradition as poem-hats have been absorbed into folk music and songs. Today hats are still used by young girls to shade their heads in the sun and to make them look more graceful in the traditional Áo Dài (long dress). (WayToVietnam)
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