Couple Nguyen Van Hoa and Dang Lan Huong living in Hang Than Street are the last paper mask artisans in the Old Quarter.
The couple’s 20-square metre paper mask workshop is full of materials for making masks, including stacks of scrap paper, paintbrushes, boxes of paint and molds.
Lan said that she has been making paper masks since she was just 19, and she has been in the profession for 44 years.
According to Lan, to make a paper mask requires many steps. The first is preparing materials such as tapioca flour to be used as an adhesive and using paper or cardboard. The next stage is coating and tearing the paper, then layering it onto a mold. Each mask needs 4-5 layers of paper. Masks are then dried in the sun to maintain their desired shape. It takes about a day to dry the masks.
After being dried, small details are painted onto masks to form the final product.
Every day, the couple produces around 20 masks. They have 30 different characters for the masks, like Ong Dia (a happy Buddha who is a lion master), buffaloes, horses or tigers along with modern ones such as Spiderman and Superman.
Masks are priced from VND40,000-150,000, depending on their design.
