The lacquer technique involves applying several layers of natural resin to wood. Painting on silk involves hand-painting on a delicate fabric, with a play of transparency. These two millennia-old techniques also bear a colonial heritage, as Thao Nguyen Phan reminds us. In Vietnam, they were institutionalized and “elevated to the rank of art” during French colonial rule, with the founding of the Hanoi School of Fine Arts in 1925. From then on, craftsmen became artists and began to sign their creations.