Vietnam has 54 separate ethnic minority people in its vast population.   Many have their own language, not merely a dialect of Vietnamese. They also have their own culture and customs.

There are few if any physiognomy differences between the people of Vietnam, yet it is easy to distinguish the people from the Minority tribes from their more prosperous and sophisticated Viet neighbors.

Many of these people produce almost all the essential products for their own use, with only infrequent trips to more central markets for trade each year. 

With strict gender-based divisions of labor, the work done collectively does not yield a commodity, but a part of the best possible product for the community.

Many produce household articles that are well known and distinctive.  Woven products are quite diversified, with most articles made from rattan or various species of bamboo.  Each is decorated in a simple but beautiful pattern.  Some are for daily use, while others are for ritual  or labor. 

Whether baskets, sieves, back-packs, mattresses, chairs, fishing traps, tobacco boxes and more, it seems strange to the more sophisticated societies that in their own culture, these ethnic people prefer the more modern pieces to the old.

These craft products are loosing their local market viability as they cannot compete favorably with industrial commodities that are mass produced and sold widely at cheap prices.

Goods are traditionally not sold for profit but bartered at even exchanges for the value of labor.  Until the establishment of craft villages, the people did not have any economic incentive to specialize in making such products.

In some ethnic minority societies, only one month a year was allotted for making woven products, whether baskets, wattles for drying rice, or repairing and building new granaries for storage of rice.

The products shown here are made by members of various ethnic minority people who now seek to keep their craft skills alive and pass them on to succeeding generations. 

In an ever-changing and more modern world, that task becomes all the more difficult with each passing year.

For the collector of fine handicraft products, that only adds to the value of the collection.

However, for the people of the land, to preserve their heritage, it is deemed a necessity that these crafts continue.

Woven products of Vietnam's ethnic minorities in various forms reveals the following distinctive characteristics:

• Unique breakthroughs in form, curve and sculpture
• Unique application of decorative patterns
• Unique colors and use of colored leaves, woods and fabrics
• A distinctly Vietnamese esthetic element of overall design and function.

V V G alone has a unique relationship with the leading Master Weavers in Thailand and  Vietnam. We are the  exclusive buyers of the entire production lot of each village that weaves for us. The same Master Weavers who are now in their 70s and 80s, are for the first time in decades teaching young apprentices, who themselves are in training to become journeymen.

For the first time ever, these works of art will soon be produced in commercial quantities for the sale to discerning buyers.  No where else in the world are baskets of these sizes and complexity made.

We feature only baskets woven by the top Master Craftswomen. These are their best designs that come from the Ba-Na and  Se Dang peoples of the Central Highlands in Vietnam, and the Padong and Hmong peoples now in Thailand