Phú Quốc, Vietnam
June 2026
It is rare that I have the opportunity to meet the artist behind the creations I feature in this online exhibition. Yet for four days in June, my family and I had the privilege of staying with painter, ceramicist, and designer Vu, and his gracious wife Anh, at their remarkable homestay on a hillside overlooking the South China Sea.
The property they have created—a manor house and two chalets nestled among tropical gardens—climbs toward the rocky slopes of the Hàm Ninh Range, the mountainous spine of Phú Quốc Island at Vietnam’s southern tip.
Encountering the breadth of Vu’s ceramic work, fashioned from clays sourced from different regions of Vietnam, one cannot help but sense the influence of the surrounding landscape. There is something of the island’s weathered stone, forested hillsides, and rugged outcrops in these vessels.
Many of Vu’s pieces—including the tea cups shown here—juxtapose silky, flowing glazes with rough, granular textures that verge on sculptural protrusions. The effect is at once earthy and refined, as though opposing forces have found a momentary equilibrium.
Vu describes his creative process as instinctive rather than analytical. He works from feeling more than from plan. A piece begun in one spirit may evolve in another a day later, taking on a direction that could not have been anticipated at the outset.
One sunny morning in his studio, with Anh kindly interpreting, Vu showed me nearly a dozen vases and bowls awaiting their first firing. When I asked how a single vessel could finally display such varied colour gradations, he explained that much of the magic emerges in the kiln itself—the interaction of heat, atmosphere, and the different clays he employs.
Vu’s artistic journey began in the 1960s in a town outside Hanoi. His father, an engineer who also painted, and an uncle who achieved recognition as an artist, helped shape an environment in which creativity was ever present. Vu recalls having brushes in his hands from an early age.
Throughout the homestead, his artistic sensibility reveals itself at every turn: oil paintings adorning the walls, substantial ceramic vessels resting on hand-hewn shelves, cut-stone window frames, and even the decision to leave massive boulders exposed within the chalet bathrooms. Everywhere, art and craft are woven seamlessly into daily life.
To spend time at Chez Vu is to encounter a philosophy in which art is not separate from living. It is not decoration or adornment. Rather, it is a way of inhabiting the world—a natural expression of being itself.
