Special messenger of Quang Nam craft villages

Visiting the gallery, visitors have chances to get more information about Quang Nam talented artisans including their phone number and address. It is Mr. Tien who works as a messenger providing all the information visitors need.

Maintaining craft villages

Le Phuoc Tien is Vice Chairman of the Quang Nam Association of Craft Villages. He was born and grew up in Duy Xuyen district, Quang Nam province and became a famous artisan working in carpentry when he was just 22 years old. In 2001, traditional craft villages in Quang Nam were faced with difficulties in their markets, Mr. Tien became one of the volunteers leaving their home villages to find a new way for their products. In 2008, he came back and started his work, introducing traditional handicrafts to visitors, especially foreigners.

The story about Le Phuoc Tien reached JICA coordinator’s ears in 2015 and he was called up to manage the Quang Nam handicraft gallery at 35 Nguyen Thai Hoc, Hoi An city. Since then, he has gone to the craft villages in Quang Nam, listening to their stories and dreams, collecting all their products to display at the gallery. He divides the gallery into spaces for each styles of handicrafts, arranging them by himself. For each space, there is a story relating to the products or the craft village. Besides, he sculpts statues of famous artisans in order to honour them and introduce them to the public. In addition, he operates some tours to craft villages so that visitors can learn more about these traditional villages, experiencing the artisans’ lives and making handicrafts by themselves. It is also a way to help maintain craft villages.

Quang Nam craft villages going abroad

Tourism development in Hoi An is a good chance for him to introduce handicrafts to visitors. Thanks to his gallery, Hoi An bamboo art sculpture products become well-known and popular with visitors, especially foreigners. There are more and more order-forms from abroad and more and more handicraft products are sold to foreign customers. Thus, villagers’ income has been improved and their lives have become better.

Thanks to Le Phuoc Tien, craft villages in Quang Nam such as Kim Bong carpentry village, mat village and coracle weaving village have been revivified. Moreover, Mr. Tien has carried their unique products to a lot of countries in the world to introduce and look for the markets for them. As a result, several big contracts have been signed between customers and craft villages in Quang Nam.