Tibetan Rug Collection

Hundreds or even thousands of years ago, carpet-making was not mentioned in early writings, except when it was mentioned in reference to rugs owned by important religious figures. A lot of detailed information about Tibetan rug-making comes from foreigners who came to Tibet with the British in 1903 and 1904. Laurence Waddell[1] and Perceval Landon[2] both talked about a weaving workshop they saw near Gyantse, on their way to Lhasa. Landon says he saw "a courtyard filled with the weaving looms of both men and women workers." They were making rugs, which he called "beautiful things." One of the local aristocratic families owns and runs the workshop, which was the norm before modern times in the country.
Many simple weavings for home use were made at home, but dedicated workshops made the pile rugs that were sold to wealthy families in Lhasa and Shigatse, as well as the monasteries, for a lot of money. People who lived in the monastic institutions were home to a lot of monks. When they went to religious services, they sat on long, low platforms that were almost always covered in hand-woven carpets for their comfort.
Wealthy monasteries changed these carpets often, making money from hundreds or thousands of weavers, or taking gifts in lieu of taxes, from hundreds or thousands of others.
The Tibetan carpet industry went into decline in the second half of the 20th century. It was at its peak in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The illegal Chinese invasion of Tibet that started in 1959 was made worse by land collectivization, which made it easier for rural people to make money without weaving and cut down on the power of the land-owning monasteries. During this time, many of the aristocratic families who used to run the weaving fled to India and Nepal with their money and management skills.
When Tibetan rug making started to come back in the 1970s, it wasn't in Tibet. Instead, it was in Nepal and India, where people learned how to make them. It was around this time that the first Western accounts of Tibetan rugs and their designs were written. They were based on information from people who had left the country.
[3][4] Western tourists in Kathmandu helped set up workshops that made Tibetan rugs for export to the West. Non-Tibetan workers took over weaving in the carpet workshops in Nepal and India. They replaced the original Tibetan émigré weavers. Weavers from Nepal, which is where the Tibetan carpet came from, quickly changed the designs on the small traditional rugs to large area rugs that could be used in Western living rooms. There were child labour scandals in the 1990s, but this started a carpet industry that is still important to the Nepalese economy today.
During the 1980s and 1990s, a few workshops were also set up in Lhasa and other parts of the Tibet Autonomous Region. These workshops, however, remained and remain isolated from the outside world. Carpets made in Lhasa today are mostly for tourists or as gifts for Chinese delegations and government departments that come to the city. Tibetan rug making isn't very expensive because it uses a lot of wool from other countries and cheap dyes. Some high-end rug makers have made money in Tibet in the last decade, but there is still a big difference between what is made in Tibet and what is made in South Asia. Tibetan Rug Collection