At the age of 82, artisan Le Van
Kinh from Hue city has just finalized a set of poetic paintings of a poem by a senior
Buddhist priest in 14 languages.

He plans to embroider another six paintings in six other
languages.

Mr. Kinh is the owner of Duc Thanh embroidery shop in Phan
Dang Luu street, Hue. He is the leading embroider in Hue was presented the title
“Folk Artisan”. Experts called him a “living treasure”.

He spent more than ten years to embroider the 14 poetic
paintings.

“Ten years ago, a group of American journalists came to
Vietnam to learn about Vietnam’s embroidery. They visited my shop. They asked me
Vietnam has many good poems in books but why they are not on paintings? I
thought a lot about their question and I made these paintings,” he said.

The poem was embroidered in Vietnamese, French, English,
German, Russian, Italian, Danish, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, etc.

Mr. Kinh said that it was very difficult to write letters
for embroidering and it was more difficult to choose colors of threads to fit
with the culture of the country that the poem was translated to.

Mr. Kinh was born in a family of embroidery tradition. His
grandfather and father embroidered royal robes for Kings Khai Dinh and Bao Dai.

At the age of 10, Mr. Kinh’s embroideries were displayed at
many exhibitions in Europe and the US.

He studied modern arts from two famous painters in Hue –
Ton That Dao and Le Yen (former headmaster of the Hue Art College) so his
embroidered paintings don’t have the weaknesses of traditional embroidery.

Mr. Kinh has embroidered thousands of paintings featuring
Hue’s landscapes in order to introduce Hue to the world.

PV