Travel Gear

Images of isolated Tibet, the land of hidden valley locked in time have always dominated  impressions of the place. Nothing could be further from the truth. Tibet was a crossroad for trade linking China to the East, Central Asia to the West and India to the south. Except for the more isolated nomads, every household of any importance supplemented their income with trade and dedicated at least one family member to the task to bringing wool to India, collecting tea bricks from China, exchanging horses for brocade, tsampa for butter, cloth and carpets for sheepskins. Travel was a part of life, and people could be on the move for months, part of caravans that crisscrossed the Plateau on a wide range of routes. 

Tibetans were naturally adapted to this life of travel. Their crossed shirt is believed to have its origins in horse riding, where it proves more protective. The chuba can come on and off in parts, convenient for the Plateau weather that can turn from hot to cold in minutes, or the contrary. The horseman could easily liberate one arm, then his torso, wrap the chuba sleeves in a voluminous bunch around his waist and enjoy the sun, then pull it back on in minutes when it disappeared behind a cloud.

Every traveler had his gear, which was so deeply ingrained in the culture that remnants of it could be found even in city dwellers and the costume of officials, who had a small knife and chopsticks (in a case) hanging from their belts. People carried their own bowls, which were mostly, especially in the case of monks, made of the gnarled wood of trunks and knots of birth or tung trees, mostly found in the Mon region, now a part of India. Officials and laymen could carry precious porcelain bowls from China, and had special cases made from wool twisted over a wire frame, to protect them. Bowls were tucked into the ambam, the fold to the chuba, ready to be taken out for ceremonial tea or a break in a journey. 

The main edibles for life on the move were the Tibetan basics of tsampa, dried cheese, dried meat and butter. Except for butter that travelled in a wooden box, the other staples had little drawstring bags made of wool or skin, and would all be placed in a saddle bag for easy access. A full meal thus only required hot water, provided by a fire built on the road, lit with the flint stones that every man wore hanging from his belt. Since riding happened for hours at a time, most travelers also wore a necklace of hard cheese, which they chewed as they went along, to calm hunger until the next stop. 

Tibet is the land of travel and travelers. 

The Four Friends

The mural below is from Labrang Tashikyil Monastery and it illustrates the story of the Four Friends, a symbol of harmony. The ancient times, before the coming of the Buddha, an elephant, a monkey, a hare and a grouse lived in the jungles of the Kingdom of Kashinagar, which is in present day Varanasi, in India. 

They lived in harmony, enjoying each other’s company. They decided that the source of happiness lay in respect for others, and wishing to share this revelation with the world, set out to spread the word.  

Gradually, they developed the practice of the Five Precepts: Abandoning the taking of life, of taking what doesn’t belong to one, of licentiousness, of taking intoxicants and of pointless chatter. This practice brought them a clear mind and inner joy. It also brought harmony to their environment, first the jungle then the kingdom, bringing timely rain and bountiful harvests. The King, reflecting on these fortunate events, called on a sage to find out the cause. The sage told him it was thanks to the wisdom of four animals who lived deep in the jungle. The King asked the sage to bring the animals to him, but he refused, saying all the king needed to do was to practice the five precepts himself. The King followed his advice and the whole kingdom prospered. Kashinagar became an example for neighboring kingdoms and all experienced happiness and peace. 

The saying goes that these animals were no ordinary beings, but ones of great merit and advanced spiritual development. Later, when the Buddha came to the world, he preached that the Five Precepts were the basis for all spiritual development and that their practice led to great wisdom, eventual release from samsara and, ultimately, enlightenment.

Black Pottery

When looking to bring more charm to our Norden Camp dishware, we thought of Tibetan Black Pottery, which had undergone a revival in Gyethang, now commonly known as Shangri La. It was Spring and the guests were not due for another month, so we decided to drive down there, 1,500 km directly south of Labrang. It took three days and was a memorable trip, though I wish we had spent more time on the road, there was so much to see.

When we reached Gyethang, we saw black pottery everywhere, not always the most practical forms for dishware and visited a kiln, where we saw it being made. Clay has always played an important role in Tibetan craft. It is used for statues, mixed with high fiber content Tibetan paper, and sun dried. Tea pots and earth ware requore more firmness and impermeability, so the pieces are fired in a kiln after completion. Each area had its particulars in terms of clay, and as in many places in China, Japan and around the world, some have very special qualities and are keenly sought after. In Gyethang, the clay naturally turns black after firing. Most of the pieces we saw were rather crude, but some small wall decorations bearing the Eight Auspicious Symbols were very fine, and took more time and the hand of a talented artisan to make.

Had we had time, I would have loved to work with the clay artists and make clayware that better lend itself to everyday use, but we didn’t, so Dechen, Yidam and I loaded the car with ready-made pieces; bowls, small flower vases, braseros, and hot pot ware.

Woodworkers come from Afar

When I first went to Labrang ten years ago, I noticed a thriving trend for traditional wood carving, most obvious in doors. The Monastery, of course, had very elaborate doors, many of them new, all done in traditional form. Many new houses also had these doors, and when Dechen and Yidam got a small courtyard house near the Monastery in 2007, though they didn’t invest in a fancy door, they had furniture made and became acquainted with the carpenters and wood carvers. The most important woodwork enterprise was in Tso, the prefectural town, some 60 KM from Labrang, and from early on, it served the area in a wide radius; monasteries, individuals, shops and restaurants. All the wood workers were Chinese, and this one, Gang, had come all the way from Zhejiang Province, hundreds of miles away. When I visited for the first time his was a small workshop on the edge of town, but a few years later, he had moved into a much bigger space and brought with him a growing team. In 2012, we commissioned him the woodwork inside the Norlha guesthouse and he showed us his work on a new residential area that was opening up on the road towards Ritoma. The new 

constructions were all based on the old models; large wooden gates, the more elaborate, the more the status, a central courtyard, the rooms huddled around it. The modern touch was overpowering, with expanses of glass verandas to capture the sun, red brick and in the worst cases, tiles. The woodwork was extensive in the houses we saw, lining whole walls, with carved pillar tops and more carved panels between beams and pillars, proudly shown off by the maker, and all finished in shiny varnish. Gang’s workshop was vast, with fellow artisans carving in a room full of finished pieces; altars, thrones, tables, and much more. I noticed they all worked in the same manner as the woodcarvers at Norbulingka, will their set of self made tools lying before them. It was also similar to what I had seen in Kanazawa on the West Coast of Japan, and the patterns and styles were also very close. Gang explained that he had come ten years earlier, when everyone was busy renovating monasteries. Work was plentiful, so he gradually enlarged his business and brought fellow workers from his village in Eastern China, where he returned each year for a few months around New Year. He came from a family of wood carvers in a village where everyone had been a wood carver as far as anyone could remember. With modernization, people had lost interest in the traditional, so he had looked further West to where he could continue to practice his skills and found his place among Tibetans. Tibetans in the nomad areas of Amdo seemed to have traditionally limited their activity to herding, farming or trading. Though woodcarvers and builders were and still are plentiful in Central and Eastern Tibet, in Amdo, they seemed to be drawn from other ethnic groups and pockets of Chinese can be found deep in nomadic areas, where they were brought over a hundred years ago to build monasteries. Such a group, Buddhists and Tibetan speaking, built the wooden structure of the Norlha workshop. Gang invited us into his living room, where a whole sheep, wrapped in glad wrap, lay between the coffee table and the television. He lay a plate of fruit and nuts before us, which Norzin quickly cleaned out, and we discussed the plans for the Norlha Guesthouse.

Vernacular in Central Stage

My taste in furniture had always been somewhat restrained on the one hand by my Western upbringing, and on the other, by the ways Tibetans viewed their surroundings in terms of old and new, town and country. Having worked for years trying to bring back to memory and existence the best of what was Tibetan furniture, I later realized that the simple and modest, the raw and worn, had been overlooked with a certain disdain (this is peasant stuff) characterized by both Tibetans in Tibet and in exile and had, as a result, escaped my attention. My father, in spite of his undying love for Lyon silks, Louis XV chairs and gold leaf, also appreciated rustic French peasant furniture, which we used in every day context. Dechen and I carried this on, in the form timid love for a low, solid, worn table given to her by Yidam’s family, a few pieces from the local Tso bric a brac store, and the cheese cloth, traditionally used by nomads to dry cheese on, locally woven from yak hair and sheep wool. I also noticed the cabinet in Yidam’s monk brother’s house in Labrang, which hung on the kitchen wall, displaying the bowls and cups, with drawers that doubled as butter boxes. Local notions prevailed, though. The table, displayed on the kang in their house had to be relegated to the back room when monks came, and replaced by a hideous varnished impostor and the cheese cloth, reminded of its low rank, was barred from covering a table, and relegated to placement on a large, wooden tsampa box on the veranda. My friend Isabelle Graz, a Swiss Designer who worked in China at the time, shook things around and pushed the vernacular to center stage, gradually eroding local notions and prejudices. It started when I accompanied her roaming in the Shanghai area bric a brac warehouses. These huge spaces, divided into alleys, had furniture piled as high at it could go. The trendy art deco from the twenties and thirties had long gone, driving the Shanghai furniture traders to dig deeper inland, into Shanxxi Province, bringing out old peasant furniture. Five years ago, no one really paid much heed to an old concubine’s chair, a wood and bamboo larder or a two hundred year old armoire. They were faded, scratched, wearing marks of hundred years of use. With their simple curves, solid appearance, these pieces weighed of simplicity and functionality. The local Tibetans and Chinese visitors winced at first when they saw our newly purchased, wobbly assortment spread out in a tent in front of the unfinished guesthouse, recognizing things of their past that had long been discarded as old and useless by their parents or themselves. Within a few weeks, notions changed. Placed in context surrounded by Norlha felt and woven soft furnishings, they settled gracefully, exuding a simple dignity, a quiet elegance that lent the rooms and common areas a cosy/trendy feel. Isabelle furnished the Norlha Guesthouse with these and custom made pieces forming a simple, harmonious ensemble. A year later, when we turned our attention to Norden Camp, we decided to look even more locally for the cabin, tent and venue area furniture. Isabelle had a knack for uncovering treasures; When we drove between Ritoma and Labrang, she would suddenly ask that we stop the car at the sight of a junk pile, from where she would extract a door, an old window, or a low table from the rubble of a dismantled house. Dechen, Yidam and I learned to look at things differently, to see treasures in the ordinary objects that surround a quickly disappearing lifestyle. Yidam quickly picked up a flair for rummaging through the rubble of demolished houses and began collecting old latticed windows, remnants of a not so far away past when people pasted thick oiled paper in lieu of glass. During the fall of 2013, he and Dechen sent out the Norden team to forage for trunks, tables and kitchen cabinets in Yidam’s native area, Tsayig. They came back with tsampa trunks covered in yak or dzo hide, cabinets of all sorts and sizes, butter churning implements, butter boxes, low tables and more. The team would photograph the piece on their phone, send it to Yidam and Dechen who would give their ok. Norden has continued and refined its yearly winter village foraging, complementing our assortment with locally woven baskets, carved wooden trays, clay bowls, old rifles, and even an old cart, which have wormed their way into not only the Norden venues, but also accessorizing the Norlha stores. In a mere two years, perceptions have changed and the contemporary/old look is finding its way all over Labrang. New Trends, new ideas.

Nomad Baskets; Innovation in the Vernacular

Every few years, peasants and nomads weave baskets from the reeds and bushes found in wet areas. They are used by nomad women to collect dung, the basket tied to their backs, the dung flung into it with a backward gesture of the arm. It is an excruciating task that the women performed in the early hours of dawn, walking the areas where the animals had left their droppings, collecting, then dumping the dung into piles. Later, they would shape the dung into patties and leave them to dry, to be used as fuel.

When I looked at those baskets, I thought of all that, and not much else. It took Isabelle Graz to spot them, admire their vernacular beauty and assign them new uses. They started as trash cans scattered in Norden Camp, but didn’t manage to survive the weather. They then moved indoors and held Norlha scarves in the store, and are also carried by the Norlha cleaning team to transport laundry and supplies for the rooms. Yidam and Dechen then ordered smaller versions for other storage uses.

Kim Yeshi

Yak Hair

People often confuse yak hair with yak wool. The first has the consistency of horsehair and is most present in the tail or in the characteristic long hairs that skirt the animal’s abdomen. The wool is the fine down that lies beneath the hair, all over the young yak’s body and in specific areas on the adult. It molts in late spring and is what Norden’s sister company, Norlha, uses for making its shawls, blankets and felts.

Yak hair is a tradition of its own, and was primarily used for making the nomad’s characteristic dark brown tents, ropes, monastery awnings and door curtains. It is hand woven in narrow strips from a back strap loom, into a very dense, heavy, rough and long lasting fabric.

Norden’s founder and owner, Yidam Kyap, when designing the Norden tents, modified the original nomad tent design to a more spacious, high ceiling form, adding canvas awnings and windows to the yak hair panels.

by Kim Yeshi