Whilst the great majority of ethnic minority crafts are designed purely for functional use in rural society, others continue to be produced for ritual or ceremonial purposes, their aesthetic values being of secondary importance to their key role in propitiating the spirits and bringing individual or collective good health and prosperity.

Spirit propitiation ceremonies associated with certain Tày-Thái ethnic groups of the far north, including the Giáy, Tày, Nùng and Pa Dí, involve the use of ritual images painted or embroidered onto cloth or dó paper using natural colours. Normally kept in the possession of the village shaman, these images are brought out to accompany readings and prayers. Whilst they differ from ethnicity to ethnicity, they generally represent both Taoist and local spirits, serving to teach important moral and spiritual values. In times gone by these ritual images were painted by a class of professional illustrator; regrettably there are now few artists left with the skills to create them.

In the central highlands several ethnic groups of Môn-Khmer and Malay-Polynesian origin - notably the Ba-na, Mnông, Xtiêng, Cơ-tu, Brâu, Gia-rai, Ê-đê, Ra-glai and Chu-ru - create elaborately-carved funeral houses decorated with motifs and surrounded by wooden statues or totems. These play an important role in facilitating the passage of the dead to the spirit world.

However, woodcarving is more commonly associated with the production of everyday items, including traps (fishpots, pits, cages), cross bows, spears, bows and arrows, tobacco pipes, bowls, spoons and combs. Certain ethnic communities also preserve the art of creating musical instruments such as lutes, fiddles, flutes, reed trumpets, mouth organs and ideophones, which are manufactured from a variety of natural materials including gourd and bamboo.

In the north these colourful costumes are traditionally decorated with copious amounts of silver jewelry. Accordingly, silversmithing is still practised amongst several ethnic groups, notably the H'mông, the Dao, the Thái, the Tày and the Nùng.