Kesang Tashi is holding up one end of a 12-foot-long rug, explaining how this design (a diamond checkerboard in rich, deep browns and reds) would have been used in his native Tibet.
“It would have been used on cheerful occasions, like weddings and picnics. Picnics especially, they would spread this out and sit in a lotus position, drinking chang (beer) and playing sho (dice). They put the dice in a bowl, shake it around and then-whooo-make the throw.” He makes a sound like dice clicking together.
Such activity on this carpet today, which sells for $1,600, probably would create a bit of anxiety-but part of the charm of Tashi’s carpets is knowing something about their designs and significance.
Tashi, who left Tibet with his family when he was 8, began importing lush, handwoven carpets in the late 1980s. Although there are Tibetan-style carpets produced outside Tibet, these are the first to be exported directly from weavers who have made them in that country, he says. Woven from the long, springy hair of sheep that graze at altitudes up to 15,000 feet, they have been available on the East and West Coasts and in Europe but just have come to the Chicago area this month.
Through next Sunday, the rugs are on display (and for sale) in gallery two at 300 W. Superior St. The Chicago representative is Lynn Urstadt Gross of Glencoe.
Tashi was an international banker in New York when his life changed in 1986, causing him to go back to his roots and create the New York based InnerAsia Trading Co. to export the rugs he has named Gangchen Carpets. (Gangchen means “Land of the Snows.”)
“In 1986 I went back to Tibet to visit. It was the first time I had gone back since we left,” in the late 1950s, after the Chinese invasion; Tibet is an autonomous region within China.
“I saw carpets being sold in the marketplace to tourists, and I saw how they were not the same fine quality they had been. It was like the pride in making them was gone. You know, in the beginning, hundreds of years ago, these craftsmen always had a patron, someone who supported their work. That system was gone; the craft was dying. I thought, `Somebody should do something about this.’ That somebody became me.”
He came home and spent months studying carpets, from the operation of the retail market to the history of the Tibetan carpet-making.
“I knew I would have to get involved in every aspect, from ground level,” he said. “I’ve been back (to Tibet) at least 20 or 30 times. I lost money to begin with, but it was a learning experience.”
He talked with weavers and set up a system in which they would teach younger people the craft, which includes making and using dyes. Designs and motifs, dating to the 11th Century, when Tibetan nomads started making the rugs, were reproduced and expanded upon for the new carpets.
Many of the designs feature animals, such as tigers, and flowers, such as fields of chrysanthemums and lotus. Most are symbolic of some aspect of Buddhism, the major religion in Tibet.
“The tiger symbolizes the blind passion that’s rooted in the ego,” Tashi said, “and it’s a reminder we must overcome that passion if we are to attain enlightenment.”
Similiarly, the lotus-a design used frequently in the carpets-“is a metaphor for human potential,” he said. “It’s a flower that grows out of the mud and attains perfection.”
Tashi, who is a U.S. citizen, had been working for a New York bank for several years when he made that trip to Tibet in 1986.
“At the beginning, everything (about banking) was very exciting, but then gradually it wasn’t enough. I started thinking more about trying to do something in my native land. I wanted to do something economically viable, something that would make money, and also something that would make a difference in Tibet.”
He figures that he now has a network of about 750 nomad families, about 3,000 people, working for him, living in an area covering about 200 square miles.
“And I’m just getting started,” he said.
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Gangchen Carpets come in about 80 designs, most available in various sizes and colors. Prices are $50 to $55 a square foot, ranging from about $950 for a 3-by-6-foot rug to $5,600 for one 9 by 12 feet. Information is available by calling Gross at 312-664-6309 or 708-835-2454.
