Festival «Vinh danh làng nghề xã Chuyên Mỹ năm 2026» (Honouring Craft Villages)

   Chuyên Mỹ, often called the ancestral home of Vietnamese mother-of-pearl inlay, is throwing a festival for its own craft villages. Pearl inlay, lacquer, tailoring, leather shoes, fine woodwork and local OCOP products show why its pearl inlay and lacquer village has just received membership of a world network of craft cities.

   The full name is the 2nd Craft Village Honouring Festival and Chuyên Mỹ Craft Village Culture, Tourism and Trade Week 2026, under the theme «Tinh hoa làng nghề – Kết nối sáng tạo – Lan tỏa giá trị» («The Best of Our Craft Villages – Connecting Creativity – Spreading Value»). According to the design plan, the festival grounds draw on pearl inlay, lacquer and the commune's other signature crafts.

   On the festival grounds:

• — about 150 booths with pearl inlay and lacquer, clothing, leather footwear, fine woodwork and traditional handicrafts;
• — a showcase of OCOP products, organic and green farm produce and regional specialities;
• — a food area and a stage;
• — live demonstrations of pearl inlay, lacquer, leather shoemaking, tailoring and woodwork;
• — meet-and-greet, trade and promotion events, plus an introduction to craft village tourism.

   The opening ceremony is planned for the evening of 15 October. Under the programme still being finalised, the opening night will feature a performance, a documentary on the history and traditions of Chuyên Mỹ's craft villages, the opening ceremony and a ribbon-cutting.

   It is a good day out for anyone who likes to buy handmade pieces straight from the people who make them, for families looking for a day in a craft village outside the city, and for the simply curious who want to see how a thousand-year-old inlay craft works.

   Pearl inlay in Chuyên Mỹ goes back almost 1,000 years, to the 11th century. Local records name its founder as Truong Cong Thanh (Trương Công Thành), a general of the Lý dynasty and deputy to the commander Ly Thuong Kiet (Lý Thường Kiệt). Legend says that on reaching the coast he saw shells in their natural colours washed ashore, had the idea of setting them into patterns and taught the craft to the villagers. At first, inlaid pieces were made only for the royal court and wealthy families.

   Chuyên Mỹ inlay was used in Nguyễn dynasty buildings in Huế and has been chosen as a state gift for foreign leaders. The key stage is setting the nacre, done in three steps: filing, chiselling and trimming. The villages of Chuôn Thượng, Chuôn Trung, Chuôn Ngọ and Chuôn Hạ still work at it; today the craft employs more than 7,000 local workers in over 2,000 households, and its pieces go to the UK, Russia, the US, the Netherlands and Japan.

   On the evening of 8 May 2026, at the Thăng Long Imperial Citadel, the Chuyên Mỹ pearl inlay and lacquer village and the Sơn Đồng carving village formally received the title of members of the World Craft Cities network of the World Crafts Council (WCC), which had recognised them at the end of 2025; Bát Tràng and Vạn Phúc were recognised in 2024. Since 2011 the former Phú Xuyên district has marked 26 October as a day to honour its traditional craft villages, alternating district-wide festivals with festivals in individual craft communes. The first festival honouring Chuyên Mỹ's pearl inlay took place in 2012; the former communes now merged into Chuyên Mỹ held their own too, for Phú Yên leather footwear in 2013 and Vân Từ tailoring in 2019.

   According to the design plan, the grounds include a parking area.

   A trip to Chuyên Mỹ during the festival is a rare chance to see a whole thousand-year-old craft laid out in front of you, and to take home a piece of pearl inlay from the place where it began.