Conical Hat Making

A non la is built on a conical frame of sixteen thin bamboo hoops, graded in size and assembled on a wooden cone. Palm leaves are dried, flattened one at a time with a hot iron and laid over the frame in overlapping layers, then stitched down with fine nylon in stitches meant to be almost invisible. Hue makes the version known as the poem hat, with a verse or an image of the city cut from paper and set between two layers of leaf, which appears only when the hat is held up against the light. The villages around Hue work at this in their front rooms, several people to a frame. Chuong village near Hanoi supplies the north.

What you actually see

• The bamboo frame - sixteen graded hoops assembled on a wooden cone before stitching.
• The poem hat - verse cut from paper and hidden between leaf layers, seen against the light.
• Leaf pressing - palm leaves flattened one by one with a hot iron.
• Chuong hat market - a market near Hanoi trading in frames, leaves and finished hats.

When to go

Any time of year. Work goes on in the mornings and again in the cool of the late afternoon, with the middle of the day quiet. The Chuong market meets on set days of the lunar month, starts very early and breaks up by mid-morning. Hue's hat villages are a fifteen-minute drive from the centre and take walk-in visitors without arrangement.

Honest expectations

It is a modest thing to watch, a handful of people sitting on the floor stitching, and fifteen minutes covers it unless you are genuinely interested in the craft. Hats sold at tourist stalls in Hue are often factory made with wide, careless stitching. A real hat does not survive a suitcase, and shipping one home costs more than the hat.

Nearby

The Perfume River villages and the Thuy Xuan incense street lie on the same road out of Hue.