Puteri Harbour Marina

Johor, Malaysia

Hi All,

  We received an email from Ronnie Lindberg, one of our Tibet tour friends.  He and David are in India and but will be in Africa at the end of the week!   They have posted some of their photos and a video taken during our Tibet tour.  http://www.project-7.se/ is their website.

   Randal and I visited a carpet factory in Lhasa.  Not all that interesting, but here are the photos.  I have one or two more emails about our time in Lhasa and then will finally begin to share the amazing images of the Tibet landscape.  Baseball is taking its All Star break so I have lots of time to work on email.

Ru

DoraMac

Tibet # 11 Carpet Factory

“Tibet is the home of traditional carpet making, though the industry suffered a decline after 1959 from which it has only slowly begun to recover. Today many “Tibetan” carpets are in fact made in Nepal in factories run by Tibetan exiles. For the visitor, a little caution is needed when buying Tibetan carpets in Lhasa since the majority of pieces displayed in stores in the Barkhor and in front of the Potala are in fact imported from non-Tibetan parts of China, and many of the designs on display have no connection with Tibetan tradition; Turkomen and Afghan designs being common! In some workshops you will find a few carpets on looms for display purposes, but the carpets in the showroom will mostly have been shipped in from elsewhere.

So how to find authentic Tibetan carpets? By all means visit the factories and their showrooms. Look closely at what is being woven, and make sure the piece you are buying matches what you are shown on the looms. Check the smell of the carpet: authentic Tibetan wool has a high lanolin content and a distinctive odor: cheaper wools from Qinghai and Mongolia are dry by comparison.

A few older carpets can still occasionally be found on the Barkhor and the shops around, though good, old carpets are much sought after by collectors, so prices tend to be surprisingly high even in Lhasa. “

http://www.chinatravelguide.com/ctgwiki/Lhasa

http://www.toranahouse.com/carpetmaking.html is the website of Tanva Carpets located near Lhasa. It explains why using wool from specific long-hair sheep matters and shows how the rugs are made. Pretty interesting. Unfortunately we just went to a show room but did see a quick demonstration of how the weaving is done.

Not sure if this was an outlet or a factory or what. Everyone was at a late lunch though Lobsang, our Tibetan guide did manage to find someone to open the showroom

I managed to miss the “No Photos” sign and took this one though the clerk asked me not to take any more and, of course, I didn’t. We aren’t in the market for rugs so they quickly lost interest in us. We could tell the really good carpets from those less good, but that’s about it. The good ones feel like really good wool. One day we’ll have nice carpets in the boat. Now we have more practical industrial carpet covering our lovely teak floors.

Lobsang managed to find someone who found this young woman to show us how the carpets are woven. It was something Randal had really wanted to see so it was nice that she left her lunch hour to come to show us. We were told afterwards that it took 2 people 90 days to weave one rug.

It was all “show “and very little “tell” so we’re not really sure how the sides are actually finished.

You can see the pattern that she is following tacked up on the loom

The back side of a really well made rug looks nice too. It felt good on both sides and seemed almost reversible. I read that the pattern and colors on the back should be very clear as they were on this carpet.

Randal came away thinking that this was just a demonstration area and that most rugs were made by machines and some of the ones in the showroom didn’t seem handmade. I’m sure I looked, but I don’t remember the prices. Actually, it didn’t seem as if “tourists” were expected so we didn’t stay very long.

It wasn’t the most interesting thing we did in Tibet, though a real, handmade Tibetan rug would be something to treasure. And we certainly did see herds of sheep on our way to Everest and through the countryside. Maybe if we’d had a home to ship it to, we would have been tempted by a rug; but that won’t be for many, many years so we’ll just wait. In a few years, when we cruise around Turkey, maybe we’ll find one we both love.