Items in Le Anh Duc’s antique lamp collection, the largest of its kind in Vietnam

Vietnam’s largest antique lamp collection is on display before it is sold for charity.

His parents kept the vast assortment locked up for years, but have recently decided to open up their house for public viewing of the lamps. They now intend to sell the antiques and donate the proceeds to the founding of a new school.

When Duc died at the age of 32, the origins and histories of many of the lamps died with him. But that hasn’t kept visitors from browsing the cornucopia of lamps at the family’s home at 400/1 Ung Van Khiem Street, Binh Thanh District in Ho Chi Minh City.

The house looks like a small museum. The lamps are displayed in glass cases or elaborately carved wooden cupboards.

The cabinets are filled with colored glass lamps, many bearing European Renaissance influences. Many lamps are copper statues fashioned after Aphrodite or other Greek deities. And then there are the lampshades, and impressive blend of colorful glasses, some of which have been shaped to resemble different stylized flowers.

The lamps fill both the ground level and first floor of the house. Upstairs, there are antique terracotta lamps, which used to be lit by animal-fat candles. Others are old ceramic lamps intricately sculpted and painted. Some of the cases are locked tight to avoid dirt.

Some of the larger copper lamps include those from old ships, railway cars and even antique chandeliers. Duc had also disassembled several lamps before he died, and their pieces have yet to be put back together.

Duc spent a decade collecting the 500 lamps. Before Duc, Priest Nguyen Huu Triet in HCMC’s Tan Binh District was known to have the largest antique lamp collection in Vietnam. But in 2005, Nhan Dan (People) newspaper put Triet’s collection at less than 400 lamps.

The collector

Duc’s father, Le Cong Chiem, said Duc was the family’s only collector. He began collecting stamps at the age of six and joined Hanoi Stamp Association when he was 10. Duc’s passion later grew to collecting old coins and antiques in general.

Chiem said Duc began collecting lamps when the family moved to HCMC in 1992. He bought any lamp he liked everywhere he went. Chiem said Duc haunted scrap vendors as much as he frequented antique shops, even though he had little formal knowledge about antiques.

Photos of Duc show him as a handsome man full of energy. He had law and telecommunications decrees and worked as a specialist at the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications’ Radio Frequency Management Bureau. He always made sure he had time to buy lamps in antique shops on his frequent business trips to Europe.

Duc bought the lamps with his own savings but also often had to ask the family or his friends for loans to buy the most expensive ones. Aside from his lamps, Duc also had a vast collection of coins, stamps and antique swords.

Duc was also an amateur painter, though he had no formal training. His family’s house is decorated with several of his self portraits. In one picture, Duc rests his head on the table at night with an antique lamp illuminating his face.

Chiem said he and his wife had previously intended to donate the antiques to the government but were afraid that the items would not be well-preserved. They’ve now decided to sell them and use the money to build a rural elementary school in the central province of Quang Nam. Chiem said the school would probably be named after revolutionary activist Phan Boi. Boi is Chiem’s father-in-law, Duc’s maternal grandfather.

Chiem said the family hoped that experts would help indentify the origins and ages of the lamps so that the history behind his late son’s collection may live on no matter where the lamps go.

Reported by Ha Dinh Nguyen