Sơn Son in the flow of Vajrayana
When the essence of Vietnam meets the art of Vajrayana.
From ancient times the art of Vajrayana has expressed itself in many forms — wall paintings, paintings on cloth, embroidered images. Each painting (or thangka) carries a single charge: to transmit the Dharma, and to serve as an effective instrument for the practitioner meeting the master within. As in centuries past — when Khâu Đà La (Kaundinya) brought Buddhism into our country and let it harmonize with the culture of the ancient Việt — Vajrayana Buddhism is finding its way, step by step, into the quiet beauty of Vietnamese temples. In this current, SonMani offers traditional Vietnamese lacquer (sơn mài) as a living vocabulary for the thangka.
For hundreds of years our forebears used red-and-gold lacquer (sơn son thếp vàng) in temples and communal houses — not only to lengthen the life of architecture and statuary, but to lend the gates of the Dharma their grave and luminous beauty. That same beauty was what enchanted Victor Tardieu and led him and his students at the École des Beaux-Arts de l’Indochine — the forerunner of today’s Vietnam University of Fine Arts — to draw lacquer into painting itself. Since then, lacquer painting has become an inseparable part of Vietnamese identity.
SonMani, distilled from the love and devotion of a family that has worked in the lacquer craft for generations in the village of Hạ Thái, wishes to carry these precious traditions forward.
A ripening of conditions.
SonMani’s paintings are adapted from the black-and-white brush drawings of Robert Beer. A renowned author of many valuable books on the culture and art of Vajrayana — chief among them The Encyclopedia of Tibetan Symbols and Motifs — he has contributed substantially to the preservation and continuation of this artistic tradition. Through these books SonMani came into contact with Robert and received his support in adapting Vajrayana works into the traditional lacquer of Vietnam.
Today SonMani is proud to be the only brand in Vietnam authorized to work with Robert Beer’s art. He has been directly involved in the creation of each piece and offers his expert counsel along the way, so that every painting that reaches the public keeps the full spirit of Vajrayana art.
Vermilion and gold.
In the early stages of the project, SonMani was not without doubt about the path we had chosen. How could the refined beauty of Vajrayana painting, with its characteristic radiance, be carried fully in the vocabulary of lacquer? But the further we went, the more we were drawn in and held by our nation’s traditional palette — by the layers of vermilion, gold and silver, and by the natural materials such as eggshell and mother-of-pearl. Each painting now feels at once familiar and new. Lacquer technique gives the colours a supple, deeply felt quality: sometimes warm and gravely subdued, sometimes radiant and oddly luminous. The longer you look, the more clearly you feel the way they shift — at once dreamlike and stylized, and at the same time articulate and unambiguous.
SonMani hopes that each painting, in the hands of the person it finds, will be more than a work of art — that it may also be a quiet companion on their inner journey.