Products created by more than 50 handicraft villages from all three regions across the country will be introduced at a festival slated to take place in the central city of Da Nang from March 24-29.

The Vietnam Handicraft Festival 2009 is the second of its kind held in the country, following the first named ‘Meeting of Red River Potteries’ in early January last year.

The host city’s traditional products such as Non Nuoc stone works, Cam Ne mats and Tho Quang nets will be displayed alongside with well-known items coming from the North such as Bat Trang and Chu Dau potteries; Phuoc Kieu and Phu Xuan bronze products, and Thach That lacquers.

The festival will also showcase Dong Ky wooden furniture, Van Phuc silks, Ha Nam bamboo and rattan products, Tay Bac brocades and Dong Ho poonah-paper pictures.

A space of purely traditional countryside style will be featured through with models of craft villages, banyan trees, river ports, pagoda grounds and a lot of different folk games.

Visitors will have the opportunity to watch hands-on experiences of artisans who will carve wooden furniture, produce pottery items, weave silks, make cakes, draw folk pictures and write calligraphy.

The Editor-in-Chief of the Urban and Development Magazine and Head of the organising board, Nguyen Cuu Loan, said the event aims to honour the cultural value of traditional handicraft villages.

The festival will serve as a venue for participants to exchange experiences in preserving and developing traditional crafts in all parts of the country which are facing a threat of recession.

“Expected to attract around 50,000 visitors, the festival also aims to call on consumers to support the campaign ‘Vietnamese use Vietnamese goods’,” he stressed.

A seminar titled ‘Each village with a craft’ will be held as part of the festival to discuss the necessary conditions and the feasibility of development of new craft villages amidst the country’s agricultural and rural industrialisation and modernisation process.(VNA)