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.