The other day I visited the carpet workshop in McLeod Ganj. When you walk into the big airy workroom, your attention is first drawn to the gorgeous carpets hanging on the display wall. The colours are rich and varied, and the carpets have a beautifully textured appearance. Many more carpets are stacked on the shelf below – and there’s plenty of choice of patterns, sizes and colour combinations.
There were about eight rugs of different sizes in the process of being made. The weavers, all women, sat cross-legged at upright looms. Depending on the size of the rug, between one and three weavers worked on one loom.
I watched as they deftly threaded the thick skeins of richly coloured wool through the neutral coloured vertical threads (the warp?) of the loom, picking up three threads or four at a time – they worked so fast it was hard to see exactly how many. To change colour they cut off the first thread, leaving a short tail of wool, and gathered another colour from the wool ends sitting on their lap. Every so often they would glance up at the full-sized pattern drawn on paper and held in a roll above their heads, but they clearly knew the patterns really well.
Each row is woven over a metal rod about half a centimetre in diameter that is gradually drawn into the weaving as the line progresses. Once the row is finished the women use mallets to vigorously beat the rod down so it sits snuggly against the previous row of weaving. Then they use scissors and a small tool like a thick screwdriver to cut off the ends of wool, leaving a flat, uniform surface. After that the shuttle picks up the next row of vertical threads, the horizontal base thread is sent through the loom, the first threads of wool are knotted over the end of the metal rod and the first few vertical threads to form the edge of the carpet, and the next row begins.
Despite the speed at which the women worked, the atmosphere in the workshop was both relaxed and cheerful. As they wove, the women chatted and laughed among themselves. One weaver started singing a plaintive Tibetan melody and some of the others joined in. I provided some added entertainment as I tried out some of my rudimentary Tibetan, which gave the women a good laugh. They had no objection to my photographing them, and I was able to get some good pictures of them at work.
On the floor at one end of the well-lit workshop three women were sitting trimming a large carpet, delicately sculpting the borders of each patterned motif with large scissors.
In the old days in Tibet, the wool used in the traditional carpets would have come from the yak. The wool used in the carpets woven in exile comes from New Zealand. It’s preferred for Tibetan carpet weaving because it is soft and strong and moves smoothly through the weavers’ fingers. It’s dyed in Delhi and wound into big colourful balls, which sit in a luscious pile in boxes or on the floor behind the weavers.
It takes about a month to complete a carpet measuring about two metres by one metre. They sell at a remarkably reasonable price, and carpets can be shipped all over the world.
I’ll definitely be going back again to watch these talented and friendly weavers in action, keeping alive the fine tradition of Tibetan carpet making.
