Vietnamese Furniture

Among Vietnamese crafts, it is important to note Vietnamese furniture which has made a spectacular comeback in modern life today. With the improvement in living standards over the past 20 years, Vietnamese people have adopted some Western habits in eating, leisure, clothing…, they have also resumed some lifestyles that are very important for their family life.

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For example, while Westerners are building fewer and fewer houses, Vietnamese people still reserve an important budget for building one, just once in their lifetime, as an important goal. Vietnamese furniture represents a significant investment, because if you have solid wood furniture to install in your home’s living room, it is seen as a sign of prosperity, happiness, and family success.

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For this reason, the Vietnamese furniture market, especially wooden furniture, has experienced remarkable vitality in recent years. Whether in large cities like Hanoi, Hai Phong, Ho Chi Minh City, or in provincial cities, you can easily find wooden furniture shops or entire streets specialized in the manufacture or trade of wooden furniture.

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For example, in Hanoi, it is the De La Thanh street in the western part of the city that brings together wooden products, not to mention the numerous other shops scattered throughout the city and suburbs. Numerous are also the villages around Hanoi that have resumed their furniture manufacturing, which had been interrupted during the period of planned economy. In short, the Vietnamese wooden furniture market is experiencing strong vitality!

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Vietnamese furniture and its varieties:

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There is a wide range of Vietnamese wooden furniture. The most sold wooden furniture are naturally tables, chairs, beds… of all kinds, all styles and in all price categories. Wooden furniture for children is also increasingly purchased by families. Models of European-style furniture are also abundant. On the other hand, there are still many shops or artisans that continue to showcase traditional-style furniture, often a rather heavy style richly decorated with old Chinese-inspired motifs.

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With the modernization of life, Vietnamese people also invest to honor the memory of their ancestors, with ancestor altars in wood that occupy an important and sacred corner of the living room. Merchants have seized on this trend to sell a wide range of furniture of this kind, not to mention a multitude of wooden objects and accessories to place on these altars…

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In the living rooms of every home, besides wooden furniture which is predominant with brown as the dominant color, some objects in precious stone or bronze occupy a particular place. These are often statues (such as a big-bellied Buddha), or indeed decoration objects. Many Vietnamese still believe, like the Chinese, that the use of an object of a certain material can create a certain balance and thus bring benefits to the family. So, more than a sign of success, the use of furniture is in many cases governed by a certain belief or spiritual need. It is somewhat the influence of yin-yang theory and that of the five elements (metal, wood, water, fire, earth). In the era of modernity, it is noted with great astonishment the return of the profession of consultant on the arrangement of furniture in a home.

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For those who have enough time in Hanoi and wish to discover in depth the activity of traditional furniture manufacturing, you can visit two beautiful villages specialized in the manufacture of traditional Vietnamese furniture: the Dong Ki village on the outskirts of Hanoi; the La Xuyen village in Nam Dinh province…

\r\nFinally, we invite you to watch our short video on wood carving in Vietnam.\r\n