Incense sticks

Incense sticks have long been considered by Vietnamese people a tool for connecting the land of the living with the divine world. Lighting incense sticks on the ancestral altars or Buddha shrines on special occasions like Lunar New Year Festivals has long been an indispensable cultural and religious activity of the Vietnamese.
The incense-making craft in Thuy Xuan village is believed to be dated back to the Nguyen Dynasty in the 1800s. In the past, local villagers used to supply incense sticks to the Court, the nobility and common people in Thuan Hoa-Phu Xuan region, which is now Thua Thien-Hue province. The traditional craft has been passed down for generations of Thuy Xuan villagers, not only providing them a livelihood but also constituting a part of their spiritual life.

The making of incense sticks must go through a traditional process of various steps, including preparing raw materials, mixing aromatic paste and rolling the paste around the bamboo sticks.

Bamboo, aromatic powders and glue powder are important materials to make hand-rolled incense sticks. Thuy Xuan villagers often take bamboo from Nam Dong, Binh Dien or Phong Son forests. They chop bamboo internodes into thin, equal and smooth sticks, soak them in water for many days and then dry them in the sun. After bamboo sticks become completely dry, they are tidied into bundles and partly dipped in hot liquid dyes for several times until the lower portion of every bamboo stick gets the desired color shade, and then once again dried to the sun.

To ensure the quality of their products, Thuy Xuan villagers use only natural non-toxic ingredients to prepare aromatic paste, the most important material for making incense products.Read more