LookAtVietnam – What is an artisan? Hanoi’s artificial flower maker, Mai Hanh, would say it is those who c-r-e-a-t-e.

Mai Hanh, one of the country’s most well-known artificial flower artisans, is hard at work inside her shop at No.5 Cha Ca street.

But this doesn’t mean 58-year-old Hanh, one of Vietnam’s best known artificial flower artisans, bears any grudge against the fact that she won’t receive the Peoples’ Artisan title. She will be honored alright, with the ‘Meritorious Artisan’ title, which is one grade lower than ‘Peoples’ Artisan’ and one grade higher than mere ‘Artisan’, but she would like to see more authenticity. “Authenticity has always been more difficult,” she said while arranging a bunch of silk white roses for a customer in her tiny shop at No. 5 Cha Ca street.

After more than four decades of striving to make her flowers as close to the real things as possible, Hanh has grown successful, and, quite worn out. When it comes to making artificial flowers or arranging them, many people in and out of the country think about her.

She has designed flowers for she-doesn’t-remember how many top government meetings, celebrations, festivals and the like.

She has been invited to perform or teach in many countries from Mongolia to France, and praised by as many foreign dignitaries, including a king.

She is even too busy designing for clients, teaching or being interviewed to be always present at the shop.

Understandably, she doesn’t have as much time or energy to make flowers the way she used to.

She used to love making flowers very much and would stay up until 3 a.m. to work on them, but these days, only when she is particularly inspired will she take up the scissors.

“I’m too old,” she said.

Now, she has to hire a few smart young girls to help manage the shop which she has inherited from her late mother, a talented cook and flower artisan.

Her daughter, a Hanoi University of Fine Arts graduate who has also mastered the craft, recently stopped working full time there and only returns for certain interesting design projects.

It is the artisans’ old concern: who will carry on the trade when they retire. Hanh has many students, but they prefer more materially rewarding occupations.

Some, like her daughter, have simply switched to other professions, while others still follow the trade but find it easier and more profitable to sell cheap mass-produced Chinese flowers rather hand-made ones.

It is generally agreed that Hanh’s flowers look almost like real. Each piece of work is unique (Chinese flowers look like one another), curvy, graceful and not too bright. And for a complete rendition of reality, she adds artificial fragrances whenever possible.

On a hot Wednesday afternoon, an old customer came to buy lotuses and said the leaves didn’t look natural. “You have quick eyes. They are Chinese,” Hanh said, undaunted and with a smile.

She now sells Chinese flowers and plants to satisfy customers’ diverse needs but she would tell you honestly what she herself makes and charges accordingly.

Mai Hanh-made flowers (silk, paper or soil) can be three to four times as expensive as Chinese ones, but you wouldn’t mind the price when you want a beautiful basket for your boss’s birthday. Her customers, mostly Vietnamese, range from price-conscious ones who drop by for a few stems of lotuses, to those who wait patiently in their cars while she arranges and wraps their million dong rose baskets.

Even for those who don’t care for flowers, looking at how Hanh makes and arranges them can be quite a sight. She has become extremely fast and precise with the scissors, and the way she cuts a leaf out of a piece of paper or bends a straight lotus stem to make it look more natural makes you feel like a little kid staring with wonder at a dexterous magician.

“This is a trick,” said the characteristically blunt-spoken artisan with a sense of humor. Years of performing abroad have paid off. The Japanese in particular once gave her this enlightening advice: audiences are easily impressed by dizzy and flowery hand movements. She has since then paid more attention to the performance aspect of her craft and has long brought it to near perfection.

Officials used to observe skilled craftsmen right in the heat of action before bestowing on them the ‘artisan’ title, she said. Things are easier now, and, as far as she knows, one only need submit their finished products.

She would rather stay away from all the busy nothingness of being awarded the ‘Meritorious Artisan’ title. “I don’t want to be thought too proud,” she said.

The flower shop on Cha Ca street is nothing but pride, albeit a subtle and justified kind. It has been run by generations of a ‘true Hanoian’ family who is even more famous for their grilled chopped fish, one of Hanoi’s best loved dishes.

Located at No. 14 on the other side of the street from where Mai Hanh’s shop is situated is her family’s first grilled chopped fish restaurant which was so popular that the street, formerly called Hang Son (Paint street), was renamed Cha Ca, meaning grilled chopped fish.

Conscious of her background, the flower artisan treats her craft and works with the utmost care that can only be found in people who take pride in their professions. She learned the craft from her mother, but has added to it her own creativity.

Each artificial flower has its own soul, she said, and making them isn’t just about skills, though many of her students are contented with that. “You must have imagination too.”

VietNamNet/SGT