Spirit of Place: Divine Inspiration for Pottery

Contemporary residents of Palei Hamu Craok have a common understanding of their past, despite its historical obscurity. Many trace their lineages to an ancestral deity named Po Klaong Can. Po Klaong Can was a mandarin of Po Klaong Garai, a king of the Champa civilization who ruled the area from 1151-1205 CE. Po Klaong Can helped the villagers by leading them to a new settlement, Hamu Craok, and showing them a clay pit where he taught them about pottery. In gratitude, the villagers deified him as ‘the God of Pottery’ and built a temple in his honor, known as Danaok Po Klaong Can. Initially, the temple was located in the center of the village field, tambok min. However, in 1967, it was relocated from the old village, palei klak, to a new location 2 km west of the new settlement created in 1964. In 2014, the new temple was damaged by weather, and the community raised funds to reconstruct it. The current building, supported by three trusses, spans two rooms and features a main temple door facing east. The inner sanctum houses the main shrine, featuring a stone linga-yoni altar with the face of Po Klaong Can on the linga aspect. A smaller stone altar to the left of the main shrine features Po Klaong Can’s wife, Nai Hali Halang Tabang Mâh (also known as ‘Po Nai’). On the right side of the temple’s entrance, a small nandin statue representing the steed of Shiva can be found. These statues were repurposed from a 9th-century temple that was burned by a Jawa army in nearby Phước Hữu commune. However, the statues only came into the possession of current residents in 1967.

Spirit of Place: Divine Inspiration for Pottery

Po Klaong Can’s Method: Perfection Through Practice

The villagers may hold the belief that Po Klaong Can, who lived in the 12th and 13th century, was a historical figure that became a god and taught them pottery. However, research conducted by art historians, historians, anthropologists, and archaeologists reveals that many features of the pottery methods used at Palei Hamu Craok can be traced back to earlier Champa techniques and even the pre-Champa Sa Huỳnh culture, which existed around 3000 BP. Similar production processes, vessel types, and outdoor pottery firing methods can also be found at Sa Huỳnh sites. Consequently, some scholars suggest that Palei Hamu Craok’s methods are among the oldest in Southeast Asia. Although this assertion is yet to be confirmed through comparative work, it can be argued that Palei Hamu Craok is presently the oldest surviving pottery production center in Vietnam.

Despite the simplicity of the required materials for making Palei Hamu Craok pottery, older production sites have abandoned traditional methods. The necessary materials for firing the pottery include clay, sand, firewood, straw, and rice husks. The sand used in the process is mixed with clay collected from the nearby Quao River, which contains lithium particles collected during the flooding season from nearby rivers and streams. The particular clay source has an exceptional natural characteristic of high adhesion and an inexhaustible supply. The residents take the clay from the pit in limited quantities, allowing it to regenerate every six months with natural flooding cycles. To retrieve the clay, potters dig 0.5-0.7m deep holes across an area of ​​1m2, after which they fill the hole with soil, and rice can be planted on the spot. The clay pit will yield new clay in another six months.

Once the clay is collected, it is dried and soaked in water for about 12 hours in a hole. The clay is then mixed with sand at a 1:1 ratio, and the potter kneads the clay with their feet and hands until it reaches a plastic state. Minimalist hand-tools, including a big bamboo loop for curving the glossy raw clay, a smaller bamboo loop for thinning the clay body, a knife for cutting and etching decorative patterns, a stick for poking holes in the clay, a small cloth for smoothing the surface of the wet clay, and a comb for creating wave patterns, are used to work the clay through four stages.

In the first stage, the potter creates the primary form by shaping the clay into a “pumpkin” and setting it on a clay “anvil”. Starting at the base of the pumpkin, the potter uses their hands to create the basic shape of the ceramic piece (20-30cm high). The potter then expands the size of the shape, connecting the base and working the sides upwards. The kagoh is used to brush around the body to smooth the surface, including the mouth, and rub out fingerprints, before the body is rubbed with the cloth to make the clay glossy.

Thanh Ha village (Hoi An, Quang Nam)

In the second stage, the potter rubs the piece smooth, wrapping the tanaik around their hand and gently touching it to water before rolling it across the mouth of the piece to create a bell-shaped or cupped mouth, with a standing rib, around the whole outside of the lip of the mouth of the piece.

In the third stage, decorative motifs are added. The potter may use a piece of cloth, seashells, plant flowers, or even leaves to create patterned motifs, with traditional motifs including jagged, sharp lines, waves, patterns of vegetation, and numerous sea motifs created with shells. Due to market demands, these patterns have become more sophisticated over the past decade, with human and animal motifs following classical Champa art styles increasingly being added to the repertoire.

In the final stage, the pieces are left to dry on a forming platform before being brought to a shady place to prevent cracking. When the pieces are completely dry, the potter shaves the bottom of the ceramic from the platform using a tanuh, and the firing stage can begin.

Cham pottery is fired exclusively outside, without the use of kilns. To fire the pottery, potters collect wood from the forest during the dry season, along with straw and rice husks from rice fields after harvest. The pots are stacked according to size, forming a large cube structure with the largest items at the bottom and the smallest at the top. The pieces are then surrounded by slabs of dry wood (20-30cm high) and covered with a combination of straw and husks. The combination of husks and straw ensures that the fire will ignite quickly, burn hot, and burn consistently for about two to three hours.

After firing, a natural plant-based glaze can be added to the pieces for extra decoration if desired. The production process is a form of traditional pottery that is timeless, as potters use sophisticated techniques, but they are all done by hand. From clay preparation and gathering to shaping the pieces and firing, the potter works entirely with their own hands, only using simple hand-tools. A Palei Hamu Craok potter’s skills must be finely tuned through years of training to follow the stages of production accurately day in and day out, from one year to the next.

Ceramics in Vietnam

Style & form: The contemporary art

The pottery production at Palei Hamu Craok can be divided into five broad categories based on the style and function of the pieces. The first category includes large and small pots, used mainly for cooking or storing drinking water. These pots have round bottoms, small mouths, and large round bodies, with an average height of 20cm and a diameter of 15cm near the base. The walls of these pots are approximately 0.8cm thick. The second category, called klait or glah, comprises pots with a full bell mouth, short neck, drooping shoulders, and a full middle body with a smaller round bottom. These pots are commonly used for cooking and are 20cm high, with a mouth diameter of 10cm and walls around 1cm thick.

The third category includes pots used to store various substances such as water, salt, and rice. These pots are slightly rounded at the bottom with a cupped standing mouth, standing neck, sloping shoulders, and round body. They are generally 40cm high, with a mouth diameter of 15cm and walls around 1.2cm thick. The fourth category comprises ceramics that have straps attached and two to three legs, and are mostly used as portable stoves or braziers on which cooking pots can be placed for heating. These pots have full cupped mouths and flat bottoms and are generally shallow. Water storage pots also fall into this category.

Finally, the last category consists of purely decorative pieces and toys, commonly taking the form of animals or including animal motifs such as water buffalo, cattle, humans, and trumpet-like instruments.

Over the past two decades, Palei Hamu Craok’s pottery production has undergone significant changes. Historically, the most produced pots were categorized into the first through third categories, which included pots for cooking and storing food and water. However, in the late 1990s, to meet the rising demand for pottery production, more men began to turn towards the traditionally female-dominated profession of pottery making.

Ceramics in Vietnam

Furthermore, there has been a shift towards producing more decorative pieces in the fifth category. These pieces include flower vases, variations of water pots, light boxes, and statues of classical deities of Champa, such as Shiva and Nandin, Brahma, Vishnu, and Apsara dancers. These new designs represent the desire to establish niche markets for Palei Hamu Craok ceramics, but also represent the revivalist interests of the artisans themselves. The result is new designs that are both creative and evocative, mostly produced by a younger generation of artisans.

This shift towards more decorative pieces has blended the fifth category with the more traditional pots, which are also growing increasingly ornate. The popularity of these new designs has grown to such an extent that they are now used to furnish homes, cafes, restaurants, hotels, and seaside resorts across urban areas in southern Vietnam.

In fact, by the 2010s, somewhat regular shipments of Palei Hamu Craok pots were being sent internationally. The centuries-old process of traditional pottery, inspired by the god Po Klaong Can, represents an intangible heritage of the global community. The revival of interest in classical Champa art styles, coupled with the desire to establish niche markets, has led to a thriving pottery industry in Palei Hamu Craok.

As the pottery industry continues to evolve, it will be interesting to see how Palei Hamu Craok’s artisans incorporate new design elements into their traditional pottery-making techniques. The global popularity of Palei Hamu Craok ceramics is a testament to the skill and creativity of these artisans, as well as the enduring appeal of traditional crafts.

• Trương Văn Món (Sakaya), Faculty of Anthropology, University of Social Sciences & Humanities – Vietnam National University, Ho Chi Minh City. He is author of numerous books on Malayo-Polynesian cultures and Cham culture including The Myths and Legends of the Cham People (Tri Thuc Press, 2018).
• William B. Noseworthy, Department of History, McNeese State University – University of Louisiana System, Lake Charles. His is author of numerous articles and book chapters on Southeast Asian history. He is currently working on a new book, Gods of the Soil. He was co-author with Sakaya et al. on the Cham-Vietnamese-English Dictionary (Tri Thuc Press, 2014).