In Use and for Sale

 Here's an ordinary pot, filled with sand, and used to hold incense sticks in a little shrine on the stairs up to a pagoda.

 Here are pots like the ones we saw in in the potteryt village, in the courtyard of a temple.

 Here are some ordinary pots for sale in the market in Hue.

 Pots used to collect rainwater in a temple courtyard.

This is a little still for making rice brandy.  The big pot is full of water, used to cool off the steam coming from the metal pot behind it.

Ordinary Ware

 On our way back from Ha Long Bay to the Hanoi airport, where we caught a flight to Da Nang (how that name resonates to anyone who followed the news in the 1960s and 1970s!) we stopped in a village where the people make pottery.  Unfortunately, we had only our driver, who spoke no English beyond a word or two, so we couldn't ask any questions.
By the time we got there, in the afternoon, almost no one was at work, but we did find this woman trimming pots in a family workshop.

 These women are finishing coffins for reburial.  Earlier our guide explained to us that after a person's parent has been buried for about three years, his or her children have the duty of exhuming the skeleton and cleaning the bones, and then reburying them.  Later, when I showed these pictures to another guide, Buy, in Hue, he explained that this custom was peculiar to North Vietnam.
Many of the fields that we passed along the highway had corners devoted to tombs, a practice which the government is apparently stopping now.

 This man is finishing one of the large pots that are made in the village.

 I believe these are charcoal stoves.

 Here are some more pots waiting to be glazed.

 The brick structure in the middle is a wood-burning kiln, and the wood piled up on the right is the fuel.

 This is another kiln.  It isn't clear to me whether each family workshop is an independent business, or whether the entire village is a kind of factory.  You need a guide to get information like that.

 I wish we could have brought one or two of these large pots home.

 Here is ware drying in the courtyard of a workshop.  Evidently ceramic drainpipes are still cheaper than pvc in Vietnam.

 This is the clay before it is milled and mixed with water.

 Here is more wood to fuel the kilns.

I took many more pictures of these splendid pots.  Sooner or later they will all be replaced by plastic containers, but maybe not until wages in Vietnam rise considerably.

Fine Pottery

 I already mentioned the antique shop in Hanoi where we saw the jade chariot.  When the owner saw how appreciative we were of the treasures in his store, he insisted on showing us everything.
This urn is just one of the exquisite objects he had for sale.  Since I am an amateur potter, several lightyears behind the skill manifest here, I appreciate what I am seeing.
Vietnam was ruled by China for a thousand years, and every Vietnamese person we could speak to insisted on Vietnamese national and cultural independence, but without Chinese influence, would we have seen such a treasure in Hanoi?

 In Hoi An, we walked into a souvenir shop, looking for something else, and saw these plates and cups.
As near as we could understand from the shop owner's English, these plates were found in the river mud.
Hoi An was an important harbor, with large expatriate trading communities, until the river silted up, and this pottery is evidence of the former trade.

The shop owner knew very well how valuable these plates were, and the prices were not low, but how could we resist buying a little saucer?

People who Love Plants and Gardens

 Here it is, a lotus, the symbol of Buddhism, growing in a pond at a roadside restaurant complex.

A flower stall in the market at Hoi An.
One of the first things we saw in Vietnam, in our ride at night from the airport in Hanoi into town, was flowers being transported on heavily laden motor scooters from growers into the wholesale flower market.

 A bonsai for sale.

 A house in Hoi An.
Perhaps the profusion of plants on the upper story compensate for the clothing store on the street level.

 Living plants blend in with a mosaic tree at one of the imperial tombs near Hue (I think).  The tree and the deocrations around the window are made in part of broken pottery.

 In a monastery courtyard: bonsais, a miniature mountain, a real tree, flowers, a model pagoda.

 The large, new statue ath the Marble Mountain is of less aesthetic interest than the pool and potted plants in front of it.
The jagged stone islands jutting out of the reflecting pool are like a miniature of the Ha Long Bay landscape.

Altars and Offerings

 People leave offerings in the temples, not for the idols to eat, of course, but for the priests and monks, the caretakers of the temples and pagodas.

 Still it seemed odd to us that so much junk food was left for the monks.

 I loved the clutter of the altars, the ritual objects, the offerings, the flowers, the decorations of the temples.

 The multitude of objects suggests abundance of blessing.

 This is an altar in honor of an emperor of Vietnam in the citadel in Hue.

 I'm not sure who or what was borne in this palanquin.

 The jars on the altars contain the ashes of Imonks of the monastery.
The final picture was taken on a street in Hoi An, through a doorway into a store that was closing for the evening.  Our hotel also had an altar in the lobby, as did many of the restaurants where we ate (and as do many Chinese restaurants in the US).
I very much like the idea of setting aside a sacred place in one's home.

A Last Group of Statues

 On the way from Saigon to the Mekong Delta, our guide stopped in a temple complex, which was dominated by the enormous statue of the laughing Buddha that I posted earlier.  Inside the temple, things were more tasteful.
We saw quite a few miniature mountains like this in monasteries.

Again, the aesthetic taste we bring with us from the West seems to be irrelevant to the Vietnamese, for whom a neon halo goes fine on a sublime, golden statue of the Enlightened One sitting in mediation.

It's hard for us to know what's usual and what's unusual in Vietnamese art, since we are so unfamiliar with it.
So, without saying that they are unusual (though we didn't see anything else like them), we were much taken with a series of small sculptures (about 25 cm. tall) of pilgrims riding various animals, some real, some mythological.