A Vietnamese man obsessed with traditional porcelain dishes and antiques has spent the last 25 years of his life decorating his house with almost 10,000 porcelain bowls, plates and urns.

Nguien Van Truong first fell in love with porcelain antiques in 1986, a year after being discharged from the army and returning to his home village of Kieu Son, in Vietnam’s Vinh Phuc province. He was making a living as a carpenter at a time and got the chance to paint the table and chairs of a local antique collector who first introduced him to the beauty of traditional porcelain dishes. Truong was so impressed that he decided to become a collector himself, and scoured all of Vietnam’s northern provinces in search of traditional porcelain objects, and spent all of his money trying to acquire as much of it as possible.

Truong’s obsession with porcelain was hard to accept, even by his family, especially since he would spend every last dong he had on it, and then borrowing more from neighbors, relatives and friends. He traveled the country, visiting every place where he heard that people were selling porcelain dishes, and carried the objects in his backpack for weeks, sometimes months on end.

The 58-year-old’s original plan was to buy the porcelain and than sell it off for a profit, but after seeing the “bleeding of antiques” overseas, he just couldn’t be involved in the practice. So instead of selling the dishes, he simply stockpiled them until he could figure out what to do with them.

Nguien Van Truong said that he was afraid his collection would get stolen or broken if he simply kept it in his home. He even took into consideration his own demise, and the probable sale of his porcelain objects by his family, something that he couldn’t cope with. So to make sure his collection endured the test of time, he decided to incorporate it all into his home.

I thought the only way to protect the legacy of our ancestors was to attach them to the walls of my house,” Truong said. So one night, after dinner, he started mixing some mortar and attaching some of the porcelain bowls in his collection to the walls of his house. Then he moved on to the fence and gate, and then to the interior.

Truong’s house is now covered in nearly 10,000 porcelain plates, bowls and urns, and photos of the unique property have been doing the rounds on social media. The collector says that while beautiful, most of the pieces incorporated into his home are relatively cheap, although he does have a few pieces dating back to the 17th and 18th centuries.

 

The Vietnamese porcelain collector does not care about the financial value of his dishes, all he wants is to preserve his country’s culture. To make sure his legacy outlives him, he has already told his children that they cannot sell or demolish the house after his demise. They can either live in it or build their own.

Sources: Vietnamnet, Thanhnien, Baobacgiang