Traditional Tibetan Rugs - artelino

A wild Tibetan horseman on a sturdy, short-legged horse in combination with a colorful Tibetan saddle rug. That makes a nice picture! Right.

But that is not the real reason why Tibetans used saddle rugs. It is by far more trivial. The Tibetan saddles were made out of wood. And horse and rider needed some kind of padding.

Read the whole story about Tibetan saddle rugs.

Lots of images of Tibetan rugs in vegetable dyes made in the early 1980s.

This is not a sales catalog, but these are more than 50 historic images of Tibetan rugs in vegetable dyes from the early eighties, when this type of Tibetan rugs used to be popular.

People who live in barren, mountainous regions have a liking for strong colors - for their clothing and the decoration of their homes. Neither the Tibetans nor the Indians in Peru nor my own fellow countrymen here in the alpine region of Bavaria make an exception.

This article is about the use of vegetable and chemical colors in Tibetan rugs, their characteristics and their differences.

The phoenix is a mysterious, self-regenerating ('like a Phoenix out of ashes') bird that can be traced back to the mythologies of many ancient cultures - Egyptians, Romans, Greeks, India, Chinese, Indonesia, Persia, Central America and many more. It is astonishing how the same type of creature can show up in old tales of so many different world cultures.

The Tibetans make no exception and in their rich culture you find the symbol of the phoenix bird on Tibetan arts and crafts, frequently on rugs. This article tries to explain the phoenix symbol used with Tibetan carpets.

Slide show of roughly 50 traditional Tibetan nomad rugs in sizes of 3' by 6' (90 by 180 cm). The rugs were made entirely by hand after old designs.

All designs are typical for the traditional style typical for the artelino Tibet rug shop.

This film shows how Tibetan carpets are made all by hand in the small Himalayan country of Nepal. By courtesy of Nepal Carpet Industries. 13 minutes long.

Enjoy the video.

This page shows new photos from the manufactory in Nepal where artelino's Tibetan rugs in traditional designs and sizes are made. What you see is the major phase, knotting. But this is just one step required to make an all hand-made Tibetan rug.

The symbols of Tibetan rugs are mostly of Buddhist origin. Others, such as many animal depictions, have their roots in the mythology of Tibet.

All symbols in traditional Tibetan rugs have in common that they are auspicious - even those horribly looking beings like the thunder dragon or tiger.

This page is an accompanying text by artelino for a video produced by the Carpet and Wool Development Board of Nepal and available on the artelino web site by courtesy of Nepal Carpet Industries. The video is 13 minutes long and demonstrates the labor-intensive process of making a carpet in the Tibetan weaving tradition in Nepal.

The traditional Tibetan rug knows a large variety of design patterns and symbols.

Quite different from Tibetan thangka painting with rather strict iconographic design patterns and rules, the designers and weavers of Tibetan carpets have a rather large degree of freedom in combining patterns, symbols and colors.