Traveling to Tibet, you will be able to appreciate not only a wide variety of natural resources and beautiful scenery far away from this mortal life, but also elaborated products. Tibetan carpet is one of those exquisite products there. Tibetan carpets are mainly antique carpet and are known as the world three most famous carpets together with Persian carpets and Turkey carpets. As people usually know, Tibetan carpet is noted for its unique method of weaving, bright but harmonious color and soft and fine surface. There won’t be color fading after washing and never loss hair so that it is highly resistant to wear and tear. In addition, coupled with patterns carried enormous national cue made it enjoys a very high value of appreciation with exquisite workmanship and beautiful and generous appearance. The most well-known Tibetan carpet must go to the one in Gyantse area. Besides, carpets produced in Lhasa, Gongga, Langkazi, Nangxian County, Dengqen and Chaya also enjoy very good reputation.
Tibetan carpet is known as a traditional handicraft in Tibet. The raw material of Tibetan carpet is selected from wool of high quality on the northern Tibetan Plateau, kitted with plant dyeing, manual twisting and carefully waving by craftsmen. Hence Tibetan carpets are soft, durable, beautiful and generous together with strong ethnic characteristics. Apart from that, Tibetan carpets also played a significant role in cold and humidity resistance and heat preservation for people who live in high and cold region. So it is necessary for those living in pastoral areas for a long time. The Tibetan carpet formed its own unique Tibetan art on the basis of traditional Tibetan art with absorption and integration of the Han, Indian and Nepali essence of religious artists. After two thousand years of practice, refinement and development, the traditional production technology formed a main weaving method featured in “threading with knots” and also combined with other production process such as combing, hand spinning, dyeing, straight snips and washing production etc.
Generally speaking, Tibetan carpet can be divided into three categories. The first type is woven together with yak wool threads and wool yarns, more vivid and complicated patterns as well as softer texture. The second kind is made of fine sheep wool with very simpler and unpainted pattern but also with some thin colorful blanket weaved by colored threads. The third one is “card-cushion” or the mat with firm texture made by canvas or leather stuffed with wool, barley straw or cured hay etc. If appropriate matched, the mats can be ideal ornament of home furnishing.
The artistic style of traditional Tibetan carpet is always taken with powerful religious overtones such as eight treasures of Buddhism, eight celestial beings of Taoism in Han nationality and seven treasures of the King which belongs to Buddhist culture in India together with fancies of men of letters and plum blossoms, orchid and chrysanthemums which represented the Han nationality in ancient times. These contents not only demonstrated diligence and wisdom of Tibetans but also their spiritual strength, meanwhile, these terms also reflected the Tibetan people’s expectations for a better future as well as their wishes and fantasy on it. The expressive mode of Tibetan carpet mainly focused on the traditional style, together with some other types like free style, dragon-phoenix style and different forms of composition in accord with the types of the carpets. However, in terms of color expressions, Tibetan carpet is particularly outstanding, being noted for gorgeous color, high purity as well as strong color contrast. The color and the composition interspersed flexible, came down in one continuous line with the decorative style of Tibetan architectural painting. The design and pattern of Tibetan carpet takes a distinctive course among a wide variety of carpets and bears an elegant appearance, fully displayed the natural landscape of the roof of the world and plain and pure humanistic style with Tibetan unique color filled the air through passionate color matching and primitive natural pattern.
Although carpet cleaning is not a common occurrence, it is quite trouble. Many people are not fond of using carpet due to the cleaning problem. In the following will give you some tips on the cleaning of Tibetan carpet. First of all, pour 500 ml of branch water into a basin and then add two or three drops of wind medicated oil or toilet water in it. Sweep the carpet with a broom dipped in the water after mixing evenly, which is able to make indoor air moist as well as play a role in the prevention of mosquitoes in summer. Incautiously, if some coffee spilled on the carpet, you should use dry cloth or tissue to absorb moisture and then had equally mixed liquor and alcohol sprayed on the stains. At last, clear it up with a dry cloth. If there’s no liquor, vinegar can be a replacement for it. In addition to coffee, this method is also feasible to wipe out other food stains that will easily contaminate the carpet.
