eric mcguckin - tibetan carpets (21 pp., 1997)

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Journal of Material Culture

DOI: 10.1177/135918359700200302 1997; 2; 291 Journal of Material Culture

Eric McGuckin Tibetan Carpets: From Folk Art to Global Commodity

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TIBETAN CARPETSFrom Folk Art to Global Commodity

&lozf; ERIC McGUCKIN

Department of Anthropology, City University of New York

Abstract

This article analyzes the Tibetan refugee carpet industry, demonstrating thatthe commoditization of handicrafts has had multiple and contradictoryimpacts on the culture, economy, and class structure of refugee society.Tibetan carpets remain functional objects for their community of originwhile they simultaneously advertise Tibetan culture internationally, supportrefugee institutions, and cater to the tastes of outside consumers. Foreignconsumers exert conflicting pressures for artistic and technical change aswell as for the preservation of ’traditional’ production and motifs. The ’auth-enticity’ of Tibetan carpets is thus called into question.

Key Words &lozf; authenticity &lozf; carpets &lozf; commoditization &lozf; handicrafts &lozf;Tibetan refugees &lozf; tourism

INTRODUCTION

From the wild solitude of the remote Himalayan villages come theseexquisite Tibetan rugs. Made today as they have been for centuries bycraftsmen laboring at looms like their grandfathers before them, each rugis completely dyed and woven by hand. An individual work of art in itsown right, each rug is a singular reflection of the lifestyle and traditions ofthe individual who made it. Imbued with a rare beauty that at timesborders on the mystical.... Radiant, bold, and exotic ...

(ABC Carpet (New York) promotional leaflet)

’Commodity fetishism’ stems from the separation of the consumer fromthe mystery of production. Consumer goods appear as the anonymousproducts of capital - available through the exchange of money, itself an

Journal of Material Culture

Copyright © 1997 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)Vol. 2(3): 291-310 [1359-1835(199711/2:3]



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abstraction - rather than the products of human labor (Marx, 1977;Miller, 1987). Handicrafts are appealing in part because of their appar-ent status as products of non-alienated labor, allowing consumers to ’sin-gularize’ them more readily than mass-produced goods through oftenimaginary and idealized histories of their production and exchange.Miller suggests that with such types of object, ’production becomesreified as having a separate connotation and it is not the actual processof manufacture which is important, but the ability of the object to standfor a particular type of production and its attendant social relations.’ Anobject may ’proclaim one technological origin while actually derivingfrom another’ Miller (1987: 115). In the case of tourist arts, objectschurned out by piece-workers may masquerade as the products ofartisanal care, and invented traditions may signify timeless essences.Tourist goods may also stand for a particular type of exchange, as thegive and take of purchasing a souvenir is remembered as an intimateencounter with a member of another culture.

The transparency of much Tibetan craft production, in which con-sumers may specify design and witness manufacture, authenticates andpersonalizes the objects. For many consumers, Tibetan handicrafts inparticular connote more than other ’authentic ethnic goods’. For

example, the purchase of a thangka (a Tibetan Buddhist painting) is botha spiritual and political act, involving both patron and artist in the pro-tection of Tibetan spiritual culture from the onslaughts of the secularChinese state. For many travelers, this local drama is but part of a global(post)modern struggle to preserve, resurrect, or invent ancient wisdom,folk traditions, and human-scale production in a rationalized, disen-chanted world. While not all consumers have such grand motives inmind when purchasing Tibetan crafts, this underlying incentive perme-ates the analysis - and marketing - of Tibetan arts in academic andpopular discourse (McGuckin, 1996a).

Thangkas remain what Graburn (1984) labeled ’functional’ arts, ritu-ally important in their culture of origin. Although the larger social contextof their production and exchange has undergone change, most thangkapainters in Dharamsala have largely adhered to traditional form and tech-nique, lengthy apprenticeships have survived, and artists are accordedhigh status. The commission system guarantees a relatively high level ofartistic quality for the consumer and a sure return for the artisan.

However, in non-sacred craft industries directed to the tourist and exportmarkets, investment is risky and sales subject to fashion. Dependency onexternal markets increases competition, requires the speeding up of pro-duction, and often cheapens products, reducing artisans to piece-workers(Nash, 1993). However, profits are potentially much higher in these indus-tries, as absolute production is increased and designs, less constrained byindigenous religious or cultural traditions, are modified to suit foreign



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tastes and to facilitate standard-ized manufacture.

In contrast to the limitedmarket in thangkas, the Tibetanrefugee carpet industry has be-come big business - it has growninto Nepal’s largest manufactur-ing industry. Ann Forbes writesthat ’in Nepal, being a producerof hand-woven carpets has be-come synonymous with being aTibetan’ and that nearly all of the10,000 to 14,000 Tibetan refugeesthere are somehow involved inthe carpet industry Forbes,1989:50) (See Figure 1). Forbes andother observers have pointed outthat the carpet industry has al-lowed the refugees to remain in’homogenous’ settlements. How-ever, the only thing Tibetan about FIGURE 1 Selling Tibetan carpets,many Nepalese carpets is the Kathmandu valleyownership of the means of theirproduction, and the imagery usedin their marketing. Although carpets remain functional objects for

Tibetans, they are also mass-produced commodities targeted directly atthe tourist and export markets. In contrast to thangkas, whose spiritualsignificance guarantees some degree of traditional design, carpets aresecular ’folk arts’ that are often so radically modified for Western marketsthat they retain no Tibetan motifs whatsoever. The fortunes of carpetentrepreneurs are intimately linked with that of foreign importers.

Carpet manufacture enjoys some of the mystique of other Tibetancultural productions, and in Dharamsala continues to support individualrefugees and exile institutions. However, in Nepal, it also supports privatecapitalist enterprises that employ non-Tibetans, including children. Thecarpet industry pushes at the productive limits of handicraft manu-

facture, drastically decreasing production time, de-emphasizing appren-ticeship and partisanship, and radically modifying designs and materials.

Carpet manufacture is perhaps the Tibetan craft most open to thetourist gaze, the production process itself a spectacle tied to the market-ing of carpets and refugee culture generally. However, its largely femalelabor force is poorly paid, and many weavers cannot afford to buy thecarpets they produce. The transcendence of commodity fetishism by theconsumer does not always end the alienation of the producer.



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TIBETAN CARPETS LEAVE TIBET

In the West carpets are generally used as floor coverings, or less com-monly as wall hangings; in Tibetan societies they usually function asseats. Various carpets are used on and below saddles, as seats for lamasor aristocrats, for picnics and weddings, and in exile most frequently tocover beds, which double as sleeping and sitting surfaces. Floor rugswere generally reserved for sacred or elite contexts (Denwood, 1974;Kuloy, 1985). Today, it is primarily foreigners who buy Tibetan carpetsfor the floor. Tibetan refugees most frequently buy the 3 feet by 6 feetcarpets, which fit over wooden Indian bed frames.

The history of Tibetan carpets is vague, and there is little documen-tation until after 1880. The wide distribution of carpet weaving in Tibetleads Meyers to consider it an ancient folk art (Meyers, 1984). Carpetweaving was widespread by the llth century, and Chinese influencesare clear by the 18th (Denwood, 1974). Although most weaving wasdomestic and has been classified by various scholars as a ’folk art’, carpetmanufacture may have represented the only significant factory industryin Tibet prior to the Chinese occupation.

Carpet manufacture was diversely organized. Most Tibetans ownedsimple, domestically produced rugs. Weaving generally remained a low-status occupation, sometimes providing winter work for rural womenproducing for the local market. Landlords sometimes maintained work-shops with a few weavers, and local governors might hire teams of maleand female weavers. In the cities small companies employed specializedweavers, spinners, and dyers. The production of such factories was pri-marily targeted at an elite market.

In an attempt to open the Tibetan market, in the 1870s the Britishestablished trading posts along the border in Sikkim, Bhutan, and Dar-jeeling. After the Younghusband expedition fought its way to Lhasa in1904, wringing trade concessions from the Tibetans, wool and a fewcarpets were exported to British India. Some traders began sponsoringproduction, but workshops remained small and rarely employed morethan 30 weavers. Although the quality and prestige of Tibetan carpetsincreased, having acquired a taste for foreign goods, elites continued toprefer imported rugs (Denwood, 1974; Meyers, 1984).

It is in the context of exile, foreign sponsorship, and new tourist andexport markets that the Tibetan carpet industry has expanded tremen-dously. Carpet manufacture is one of the largest employers of andrevenue generators for Tibetan refugees. The Tibetan carpet industrynow employs some 10,000 workers in India. In Nepal it employs approxi-mately 300,000 workers and in 1992 generated US$ 120 million in exportrevenues (Pradhan, 1993). The Tibetan exile carpet industry is perhapsthe world’s most successful example of what Erik Cohen has called



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’rehabilitative commercialization’, the externally sponsored and mar-keted rehabilitation of a declining craft (Cohen, 1988).

The refugee carpet industry was initiated by Westerners concernedfor the plight of the impoverished refugees in Nepal. In 1961, the firstsmall production site was established at the Jawalakhel refugee camp inthe Kathmandu valley by aid workers of the International Committee ofthe Red Cross, with technical and financial help from other Europeanand American agencies and donors.

Ann Forbes, a researcher for Cultural Survival International, reportsthat initially the refugees enjoyed free rations, but wove carelessly andrefused to work long hours. A Tibetan assistant for the Red Crossexplained to Forbes that ’both the men and women were very lazy’(Forbes, 1989: 53). He understood the difficulty was due to the transitionfrom agrarian to more regimented factory work. Some Swiss officials,however, believed the Tibetans simply wanted to live on charity, andwere looking forward to their return to Tibet. In 1965, the carpet centersswitched from a guaranteed daily wage to a piece rate, which is now thenorm in Tibetan crafts enterprises. The adjustment to rapid piece-workand regimented schedules remains difficult for many newly arrivedTibetan refugees entering into export industries.

In 1966, most refugee carpet factories in Nepal were converted intoprivate enterprises managed by Tibetans. In the early 1960s, however,not enough carpets were sold locally to keep pace with accumulatinginventories. The Swiss provided the first contacts for foreign exports,setting up the Tibetan Carpet Trading Company in joint ownership withthe Dalai Lama and the Tibetan community. A German importer, ItanMariz, then bought all the quality carpets in stock and placed ordersfor as many as could be produced (Forbes, 1989). After the Swiss leftin 1972, the industry continued to grow in step with the tourism boom,and many Tibetans established their own businesses. In 1974, BryanHaffner’s Oriental Carpet Manufacturing, a German import company,made a deal to become the sole customer of the Himalayan CarpetExporters (HCE), a private Tibetan enterprise that had struggled to finda stable export outlet. Welcome Nepal calls Haffner the ’father’ of thecarpet industry for lifting it ’out of the cocoon of the help-the-refugeeapproach’ and persuading Tibetans to manufacture carpets with non-Tibetan motifs. ’He recognized the infinite possibilities of design andcolor that could be created and manipulated to suit the varied tastesand temperament of the Western market’ ( Welcome Nepal, 1993: 12).With the huge boom in tourism now providing a large local market inaddition to exports, the carpet industry in Nepal expanded rapidly.From a labor force of 2500 mostly Tibetan workers in 1970, it now

employs 300,000 workers of various ethnicities, primarily non-Tibetans(Pradhan, 1993).



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FIGURES 2, 3 Carpet weavers, Dharamsala

FIGURE 4 Contouring a carpet, Dharamsala



297

CARPET PRODUCTION IN DHARAMSALA

Dharamsala, India, is the home of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan

government-in-exile, a refugee population of some 5000, and growingnumbers of Western tourists, seekers, and scholars. In Dharamsala, thelargest producer of carpets is the Tibetan Handicraft Production-cum-Sale Co-operative Association (hereafter referred to as the Co-op). It wasestablished in 1963 as the Tibetan Women’s Co-operative Associationwith start-up capital from the Dalai Lama and a loan from the CentralTibetan Administration (CTA) (Information Office, 1981). Like other co-operatives in India, it is under the direction of the CTA, and its princi-pal aim is to provide assistance and employment for refugees with fewskills, education, or opportunities.

At the Co-op’s main McLeod Ganj factory, the looms are set up ina large room with windows opening out onto the street. The Co-opoffices are on the upper floors, and a sales shop is around the corner.Nearby are four residential blocks, a nursery, and a restaurant operatedby the center. Up a short flight of stairs from the unpaved road, touristsoften stand at the open doors, watching the women weave, sitting cross-legged in rows on the floor in front of vertical looms (see Figures 2and 3). Many of the women wear simple Tibetan chubas, their long hairin braids tied with colored cloth. Some wear a pangden, a multicoloredapron signifying marriage. As one enters the room, to the right five menare combing and contouring carpets with metal combs and scissors(see Figure 4). They are wearing scruffy Western pants, shirts, andmachine-made sweaters. An altar can be seen at the far end of the room,along with a photograph of the Dalai Lama. The atmosphere is dustybut cheerful; the women talk and sing as they work, and usually acqui-esce to requests for photographs. Some turn to smile at the tourists’cameras; others are embarrassed, laugh, and turn their faces into aneighbor’s shoulder. Some simply ignore the intrusion and continueweaving.

The women sit one, two, or three at a loom on cushions or blankets.Their wooden vertical looms are nearly identical in all Tibetan settle-ments and have changed little from pre-occupation Tibet (Denwood,1974). Weavers sometimes copy the backs of old carpets, or know thedesigns by heart, but most frequently they follow designs plotted onwhite graph paper by the center’s designer. The Co-op buys wool fromthe Charitable Trust’s yarn center in Panipat. The thread is either a pureNew Zealand wool or a blend of Indian and New Zealand wool that is a

bit cheaper. With generally 50-70 knots per square inch, Tibetan rugsare not as fine as Persian, Tlzrkish, or other Indian carpets. The use ofthick wool thread limits weavers to relatively simple designs. Tibetanrugs are durable, easy to care for, and cheap. A standard 3 feet by 6 feet



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carpet costs about US$ 100 or less, affordable to the low-budget travel-ers common in Dharamsala and Nepal.

In contrast to male thangka painters or skilled metal workers, femaleweavers earn relatively low wages and receive little status. However,given limited economic opportunities and the secure income and cheaphousing offered by the co-operatives, crafts production centers in

Dharamsala have little problem recruiting labor. The CTA’s handicraftschools and production centers are particularly important for the ’newarrivals’ from Tibet, who may have little education, Hindi and Englishlanguage skills, or family connections. The Co-op manager compared thesettlement in Dharamsala to the South Indian agrarian camp where hegrew up: ’There is no problem finding workers here. The problem ishaving enough rooms for them. Here we have no land, so we must dothis kind of labor.’

CARPET CAPITALISM

The organization of artisan production in many cases appears to restrictfully ’capitalist’ development. Carol Smith (1984) found that the econ-omic context of craft production in Totohicapan hindered differentiationinto ’owners’ and ’workers’. She targeted low initial investment costs,relatively high wages, alternate choices for laborers, little technologicalinnovation, and incomplete proletarianization as limiting factors. Cookand Binford (1986) criticized Carol Smith’s analysis as teleological in thatit defined ’capitalism’ in such a way as to exclude petty commodityproduction a priori. Such production, they believe, can serve as a ’seedbed’ for capitalism. The nature of the handicraft market, with its demandfor ’authentic’ hand-crafted goods, necessarily limits the extent to whichtechnological investment can increase productivity. However, the

development of weaving industries may proceed through the expansionof absolute production. Waterbury (1989), found that the output ofembroiderers in the Oaxaca valley was expanded by the development ofa division of labor and a putting-out system, with a concomitant increasein class differentiation between entrepreneurs and producers.

Weaving industries can also increase absolute production through theemployment of more home laborers and more looms. While some entre-preneurs remain aloof from the actual process of manufacture, acting asmiddlemen for the exchange of ’autonomously’ produced goods, othersown the ’means of production’ and operate workshops where they controldesign and technique, output and sales, and pay wages to employees. Theyare capitalists, no matter how ’petty’ or ’traditional’ production appears.In order to avoid a priori assumptions and teleological analyses of econ-omic development in crafts-producing communities, we need specificdescriptions of class differentiation in particular settings.



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Like the diverse settings in which carpets were produced in pre-occupation Tibet, there are varied productive arrangements in exile withvaried social effects. Carpet production is organized into private, co-operative, familial, and individual enterprises of diverse scale. Many ofthe limitations to capitalist development outlined by Carol Smith applyto Tibetan refugee industries. The relatively small scale of Tibetan cul-tural production sites, as well as the need to employ unskilled refugeesand maintain ’traditional’ production, limits the speed and capacity ofmanufacturing. Social and political interests also limit the accumulationof surplus value available for reinvestment. The costs of the Tibetanadministration and its provision of employment for the jobless, medicaland social support for the elderly, and education for Tibetan childrendrains much of the profits generated.

Most private entrepreneurs in Dharamsala are properly categorizedas ’merchants’ rather than ’capitalists’. Like the pre-capitalist merchantsof Europe, they ’reap the benefits of commodity circulation, while dele-gating the risks of production to the direct producer’ (Wolf, 1982: 265).Tibetan, Indian, or Western merchants can sometimes take advantage ofextremely favorable exchange rates, selling goods in Europe or theUnited States for many times the south Asian price of production(McGuckin, 1996b). Although merchants and self-employment often paya better rate than does the CTA’s handicraft centers, they do not offersubsidized housing, medical care, or education. These benefits are par-tially funded by the artisan’s own labor for exile schools and co-opera-tives in addition to foreign grants. These ’entitlements’ allow artisans tosurvive on less than a living wage, and often also benefit the childrenand families of merchants. Thus, the welfare system indirectly con-tributes to entrepreneurial profit, which can be reinvested in businessventures or in status-enhancing religious-political donations. Some mer-chants become small capitalists, providing looms and wool for produc-tion carried out in the weaver’s home. However, in Dharamsala, privateindustry remains relatively small, limited by the schools and co-opera-tives’ absorption of unskilled labor and their large presence in the localmarket. In addition, anyone who can afford a loom can become a pettyentrepreneur. There remains a fair amount of small-scale private pro-duction and ’self-exploitation’ in home enterprises, although returns areusually only supplemental to full-time work elsewhere. Most successfulbusiness people in Dharamsala remain petty traders, rising into a

growing Tibetan middle class, rather than forming a wealthy elite. Thosewho hope to truly enrich themselves generally expand their businesseswith the aid of kin networks to Delhi, Nepal, and even to Tibet, wherethere are new opportunities for trade.

In Nepal, the carpet industry is less limited by social and economicconstraints, and enjoys a much larger tourist market. From a small,



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foreign-sponsored ’rehabilitation’ project, it has grown into Nepal’slargest source of foreign revenue. As in Dharamsala, the carpet industryin Nepal still supports poor refugees and middle-class entrepreneurs, butit has also generated significant fortunes for a few families.

Because of the simplicity and small scale of production sites, it is

relatively easy for those with a limited amount of capital to begin carpetproduction. After landing stable foreign buyers, and with the boom intourism, Tibetan carpet entrepreneurs in Nepal subcontracted to othersmall enterprises to meet the new demand, producing the ’satellite’

system now in place. Large numbers of small manufacturers, deployingperhaps 10 to 30 looms, sell to larger manufacturers and well-connectedexporters. Requiring no mechanization, factories can be operated withflexible numbers of workers. Although the industry as a whole is quitelarge, individual enterprises are considered ’cottage industries’, tax-

exempt for the first 5 years, and subject to few regulations. Competitionhas become fierce, and under-cutting and over-production are increas-ingly problematic. Although market advantage can be sought throughquality craftsmanship and innovative design, the price of productionmust remain low. Production time has been reduced through training,factory discipline, and piece-rate incentives. However, because technicalinnovation in handicraft production is limited, entrepreneurs mustincrease the number of looms in use while maintaining low labor costs.

Many carpet entrepreneurs are ’capitalists’ in that many provide theinitial investment and supplies for the operation of factories. However,they frequently do not oversee production or the labor force. Often alabor contractor, or naike, recruits and pays the workers, directing a setamount of production in an agreed-upon time. They take advantage of a’docile’ labor force driven into factory employment by unequal landdistribution, population pressures, and environmental degradation in thecountryside. Ninety-seven percent of child workers are from outside theKathmandu valley, and some 7 percent are working off their parents’debts. However, some 1600 of the nation’s approximately 2000 carpetfactories are in the Kathmandu valley, concentrating most of the positiveand negative effects of the carpet industry there (Pradhan, 1993).

Aware of the growing worldwide concern about child labor in thecarpet industries of South Asia, an edition of Welcome Nepal claimed thatin ’Nepal’s primitive villages, it is difficult to get any job that pays incash. Thus the lure of immediate cash payment attracted labourers fromthe villages of the kingdom - and the labourers consisted of men andwomen, adults’ (1993: 12). However, a survey conducted by the ChildWorkers In Nepal Concerned Center (CWIN) found that half of Nepal’scarpet workers are children between the ages of 5 and 16, with the

largest number between the ages of 11 and 14. Sixty-two percent of thesechildren were male and 32 percent female. Above the age of 16, workers



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were primarily women, many with children who grow up in the facto-ries (Pradhan, 1993). Child laborers work an average of 13 hours a day,earning a bit below 400 Nepali rupees per month (approximately US$ 8),about half the adult rate. This is significantly less than weavers inDharamsala earn, with none of the social benefits. Only about one fifthof the children are given three meals a day, and nearly three quarterssleep in the factories. The children are often abused. The CWIN surveyfound that 44 percent of the female workers had been sexually harassed.More than 15 percent of Kathmandu’s reported rapes involve carpetworkers. CWIN claims that many of the 200,000 Nepali prostitutes inIndia, 20 percent of them under the age of 16, are recruited and sold bycarpet naikes (Pradhan, 1993).

According to Nepal’s 1992 Labour Act and Children’s Act, it is illegalto employ children under the age of 14. Children aged 14 and 15 mayonly work 6 hours a day, and those aged 16-17 a maximum of 8 hoursa day. They must receive half-hour breaks every three hours. Minors arenot allowed to work in any hazardous industries. The conditions of the

carpet factories, which rarely provide adequate ventilation and lighting,should be considered hazardous, but the small size of the factories, theyoung and shifting work force, and the subcontracting system make theindustry difficult to regulate.

According to CWIN, some 25,000 Nepali children work in Indiancarpet factories, many brought by the carpet naikes of Kathmandu(Pradhan, 1993). There are some 10,000 people employed in the Tibetancarpet industry in India, and it is doubtful that all of them are Tibetan.However, I believe the use of child labor in refugee carpet industries inIndia is minimal. Jobs in the CTA’s industries are needed for Tibetanrefugees. Were child labor employed in the Dharamsala co-operatives,there would likely be an outcry from the many foreign tourists, students,and volunteers that form a large part of the market.

Thus far, there has been little backlash against the carpet industryamong foreign consumers visiting Nepal. Tourists generally encounteronly ready-made carpets displayed in Kathmandu shops. Some ventureto the Tibetan settlements, there seeing well-fed, cheerful adults sup-porting a thriving refugee community. Buying a carpet can seem to con-stitute a politically positive or charitable act. Few witness the conditionsin private workshops. There is some awareness, however, of the environ-mentally destructive consequences of the industry in Kathmandu. Manyforeign visitors to Nepal are ’eco-tourists’, frequently engaging in moun-tain trekking or visits to the Chitwan nature preserve. The deforestationof the countryside and the overcrowding and pollution in Kathmanduare more obvious to these tourists than the economic exploitation ofNepal’s children. Carpet washing and dyeing results in run-offs of sul-furic acid, chemical dyes, sodas, and bleaches into the already polluted



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rivers of the Kathmandu valley, exacerbating water shortages (Pradhan,1993). The importation of New Zealand wool for the production ofcarpets, begun in the 1980s during a shortage of Tibetan wool, is thoughtto have introduced anthrax into the country. Marianne Fink, a long-termFrench resident of Dharamsala, reports that 90 percent of the carpetindustry in Nepal does not conform to government environmental regu-lations. She writes that she is a ’lost client’ for the Kathmandu industry,adding that another Westerner remarked that she hopes that one dayowning a Tibetan carpet will be as socially unacceptable as owning aLeopard-skin coat (Fink, 1992).

DESIGNS, DYES, AND DEGENERATION

The anthropologist Christiaan Kleiger once claimed that Tibetan carpets,while incorporating new materials, had changed very little in productiontechnique and design. Rather than abandoning ’their aesthetic for thepotentially lucrative catering to Western tastes’, he wrote, ’their designsare upheld as a badge of their identity’ (Kleiger, 1983: 12). In Dharam-sala, close to the official guardians of Tibetan culture, for a time designsremained more static than in Nepal, where entrepreneurs more suc-cessfully responded to market demand.

Like many Western academics, Kleiger became personally involvedin Tibetan cultural production, establishing the Central Asian CarpetCompany in late 1978. He hired an India-based Tibetan to buy carpetsfrom Dharamsala weavers and supervise ’the production of customdesigns that I would send him’ (Kleiger, 1992: 113). As in the case ofthangkas, Westerners often directly or indirectly initiate the productionand specify the design of goods that serve as badges of ’Tibetan iden-tity’, and promote the exotic ’otherness’ of Tibetan culture. ’From myown experience in marketing these rugs in the West’, Kleiger wrote, ’I

suggest that in order to sell a Tibetan rug, one often has to reinforce theimage of &dquo;the barbaric splendor of Shangri-la&dquo; in order to secure the sale’(1992: 117). Kleiger notes that many of the motifs seen on refugee carpetswere never used in pre-occupation Tibet. In fact, the ’traditional’ designson early Dharamsala carpets, he discovered, were a sort of invented tra-dition (Kleiger, personal communication). One can now purchase carpetssuch as images of the Potala, nomadic scenes, or ’Tibet’ written inRoman or Tibetan scripts. In order to sell Tibetan goods, then, one sellsTibet itself - or a Western idea of it - through designs that may or maynot have signified Tibetan identity in the past, but which serve as trademarks in the contemporary marketplace, announcing Tibetan originwhatever their actual origin.

The earliest photographs of Tibetan carpets, dating from 1905-10,reveal simply woven rugs, most of them with abstract designs (Denwood,



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1974). Wealthy Tibetans sometimes commissioned carpets with symbolsof the seasons for use during the yearly cycle. Some designs and colorswere reserved for monastics, and divinities were and are rarely depicted(Kleiger, 1983). Medallion designs are the most frequently seen in earlysamples of Tibetan carpets (Denwood, 1974). There is a trend to rep-resentation in the 20th century; contemporary carpets often incorporatemotifs rarely seen in the past, such as the mythical snow lion, the garuda,phoenixes, and dragons (Denwood, 1974). Tibetans tend to prefer thecolors only achieved with chemical dyes.

In contrast to trends in Tibetan taste, carpets produced for foreignconsumers are sometimes completely abstract, with geometric patternsmore commonly associated with Native American or contemporaryWestern rugs, or with naturalistic motifs of non-Tibetan origin. Manyforeign buyers desire a ’traditional’ or ’ethnic’ look. Rather than the satu-rated colors popular with Tibetans, these consumers prefer muted, pastelcolors and earth tones, which they consider more ’natural’. Increasingnumbers of carpets are produced with vegetable dyes to meet thisdemand. Since many Tibetans preferred chemical dyes even before exile,this indigenous cultural production has been altered to meet criteria ofauthenticity partially defined by outside consumers.

There are two contradictory trends in the production of Tibetancarpets: one is a move to new materials, driven by productive efficiency,market availability, and indigenous preference; the other is a return to’natural’ materials that appeal to foreign consumers. In the past, only asmall number of dyes were available on the Tibetan market. The mostimportant were madder, indigo from India, and lac - red insect dyes.These were supplemented and combined with natural materials fromlocal sources, such as walnut for browns, rhubarb root for yellows, beer,tea, buckwheat, and yeast (Denwood, 1974). By 1870, aniline dyes werecommercially available in northern India and thereafter traded intoNepal and Tibet. David MacDonald, the British trade officer in Yatung,reported in the 1930s that most dyes were still of vegetable origin(Meyers, 1984).

Until synthetic dyes became available, color variations in carpetdesign were necessarily subtle. In the 20th century, increasing trade withIndia allowed for expanded importation of cotton yarn and artificial dyes.By the 1950s cotton warps were the norm, and chemically dyed yarnsmore common. Kleiger (1983) writes that Tibetans prefer bright, satu-rated colors, which represent purity in Buddhist thought, while the dullwhites, browns, and greys seen in the vegetable dyed carpets many West-erners prefer, symbolize pollution. Arthur Leper offers a more mundaneexplanation, speculating that Tibetans desire bright colors that contrastwith the monochromatic Tibetan landscape (Leper, 1983). PerhapsTibetans simply found the novelty of chemical dyes appealing. It is naive



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to imagine that Tibetan culture remained completely isolated and static,and that innovations were always rejected, especially in the secular arts.

Simultaneously with new materials and designs came worries amongWestern Tibetophiles about the ’degeneration’ of Tibetan arts, andefforts to intercede in favor of ’tradition’. In the 1890s, the British politi-cal officer in Sikkim, Claude White, opened production schools at

Gangtok and Lachung that banned the use of chemical dyes. From 1947to 1952, Marco Pallis attempted to resurrect traditions in the Kalimpongweaving center, citing with approval White’s ban (Meyers, 1984). In hisbook Peaks and Lamas, recounting his Himalayan journeys of the 1930s,Pallis wrote that ’a severe ban against the new dyes and an insistencethat the traditional models should be faithfully followed would help tokeep the craft in the straight path’. This ban, he thought, should beenforced ’under pain of confiscation’ (Pallis, 1940: 388).

Pallis (1940) combined Western chauvinism with an elitist culturalconservatism that rivaled any Tibetan xenophobe. He blamed artisticdegeneration in Tibet on the ’importation of anti-traditional objects fromabroad, for the lure of the ready-made has everywhere been hard towithstand, especially for simple minds’. He believed that Tibetan aristo-crats should keep foreign articles out of their homes, since it was ’theirproper function to insist on the maintenance of artistic standards’

(pp. 385-7).Especially disheartening to Pallis was the use of chemical dyes

leading ’in the direction of greater vividness and vulgarity’. Among thearts, carpet weaving was in ’the worst plight of all, for that trade hascome entirely under the influence of the big importers into Europe andAmerica, who demand of the makers both rapid delivery and frequentvarying of designs, just for the sake of change’. Designs, Pallis thought,had come to merely

... attempt to catch the eye ... the patterns get larger every year and weirdanimals are preferred to plants as motifs. Vegetable dyes are abandoned forchemicals, largely because the latter will stand washing in caustic, to give a’silky sheen’ that is to say a hideous celluloid-like surface ... a single oneof these rugs is capable of upsetting the color scheme of any room into whichit happens to be installed. (1940)

Carpets designed from photographs were an insult to artistic traditions.The new carpets, he wrote, ’transcend the limits of ugliness; theydeserve to be banned for moral poisons as surely as cocaine’ (p. 386).

Such sentiments have continued with the growth of the contempor-ary industry. Production has been rationalized with factory productionand standardized sizes and motifs, with the result, complains Kuloy, thatpost-1959 rugs are ’uniformly boring and very poor mechanized imagesof the older rugs’ (Kuloy, 1985: 23). Although chemical dyes have been



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in use for about 100 years, Kuloy claims that before 1959 yarns weremostly of hand-spun Tibetan wool and often colored by hereditary dyemasters.

Most post-occupation carpets were originally made with machine-spun, chemically dyed yarn. Itan Mariz, the first major Europeanimporter of Tibetan carpets from Nepal, specified that he wanted thick,inexpensive carpets rather than fine, thin carpets. Thicker heddle rodsand wool followed. Tibetan wool is coarse, hairy, lustrous, strong,springy, and takes vegetable dyes well, Denwood (1974) wrote approv-ingly. Many carpets are now made with blends of Tibetan and NewZealand wool; some are made with Indian wool which, according toDenwood, result in hard carpets lacking springiness. If syntheticallydyed they are ’dull in appearance’ (p. 17). Contemporary designs, hewrote, are ’very often devoid of the subtlety of and harmony of colorwhich make the old Tibetan carpet such a desirable object’ (p. 80).

Carpet producers have responded to these criticisms and are nowproducing carpets using traditional materials and processes (see Figure5). The Dalai Lama’s Charitable Trust has also recognized the demandfor ’natural’ products, and now supplies many refugee weaving centersin India with hand-spun, vegetable-dyed thread. The Trust’s ’Silver

Jubilee’ pamphlet reported that ’demand for machine-spun handknotted Woolen carpets has dropped drastically in recent years and itsplace has been taken by Natural dyed Hand-spun Woolen carpets’. Thefailure to find a stable buyer for the Trust’s carpets until 1987 was due,the pamphlet states, to the producers’ reliance on chemically dyedthread until 1985. In that year the Charitable Trust established the

Gurupura Village Hand Spinning and Weaving Centre. The ’introduc-tion of the traditional method of weaving carpets (i.e. hand spinning,hand knotting, and vegetable dyeing) and not solely relying on the mill-spun chemical dye is one of the most important contributions of theTrust in the upliftment of the socio-economic conditions of the TibetanRefugees’ (Charitrust, 1989: 21-2). The Gurupura center blends NewZealand wool with wool produced by Tibetan refugee nomads inLadakh. The Trust buys most of the nomad’s production, at a betterprice than private merchants, thus supporting their pastoral economy.The Trust also aims to provide employment to the ’rural population ofthe host country’. In 1989, the Gurupura center employed approxi-mately 2000 spinners in Tibetan settlements and Indian villages, mostlyold women who received about 300 rupees a month. ’One of the most

appealing characteristics of the entire process’, states the pamphlet, ’isthe outcome of total participation of human resources in the mostnatural way.’ The wool is hand-carded and spun, and the dyeing is’based entirely on traditional method[s]’ using ’natural dyes of veg-etable and stone origin.’



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F I G U R E 5 Spinning wool,Darjeeling

The pamphlet reports thatthe use of traditional materialsand methods allows weavers toincrease their incomes ’three orfour times more’. Designs are

simpler and the hand-spun woolis thicker, allowing for more rapidproduction. ’The attraction to

Indian cities has dwindled overthe years’, the Charitable Trustreports, ’because they now earnsatisfactory wages for weavingcarpets. Many who had alreadyleft the carpet centers for reasonof low wages have returned. Ithas become easier for the centresto recruit new weavers’ (Char-itrust, 1989: 24). If true, thensuch centers promote one of thechief aims of the CTA - the

preservation of Tibetan identitythrough the maintenance of

’homogenous settlements’.

MADE IN CHINA? ’

No Tibetan artistic production is aloof from cultural and political con-troversy, not even something as apparently mundane as carpet weavingand dyeing. Because bounded nation-states, ideally reflecting some pre-sumably distinct cultural and ethnic essence, are the accepted units ofglobal politics, Tibetan exiles and their Western supporters are at painsto differentiate all aspects of Tibetan culture from that of China. Forthem Tibet is naturally separate, just as to the People’s Republic, Tibetanculture and society has been eternally under the influence of ’BigBrother Han’, always part of the Chinese family.

In the early 1980s there was a series of exchanges in the TibetanReview contesting the extent to which Tibetan carpet designs were influ-enced by non-Tibetans. Diana Meyers (1982) wrote that Turkestani andCentral Asian elements were evident in Tibetan carpets, but that themost recognizable influence had been from China, though not necess-arily from Chinese rugs. The ’key’ or thunder pattern on the border ofmany Tibetan carpets may have derived from Shang and Chou dynastybronzes, she noted. The popular medallion carpets are often called rgya-rum, or Chinese carpet, in Tibetan, and the motif is seen on Han dynasty



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bronzes. However, wrote Meyers, the three-coin pattern may also berelated to East Turkestani patterns, and some cloud and water motifs aswell as the Auspicious symbols came to China from India.

Christiaan Kleiger responded a few months later, writing that onecannot explain Tibetan designs through diffusion alone; autonomousinvention must be recognized. Kleiger wrote that Tibetan culture wasquite resistant to outside influences, and that ’Tibetan artistic represen-tation has remained quite static throughout the centuries’. He then wrotethat because refugees maintained traditional designs as a ’badge of iden-tity’, the industry was not catering to Western tastes, and thus differ-ences in refugee rugs are primarily due to differences in ’materials ratherthan technique and design’ (Kleiger, 1983: 12). Kleiger (personal com-munication) now believes the while the Dharamsala carpets of thatperiod were indeed marketed as badges of identity, those badges werein fact constructed from modified and invented traditions.

In the same issue of Tibetan Review, Arthur Leper countered that notenough was known about Tibetan material culture to state that it was’static’. Tibetan society, he pointed out, was not as inward as many haveclaimed. Although European influences were nearly non-existent, Tibettraded extensively with India, Nepal, and China. Leper recognized thatKathmandu carpet producers did indeed cater to outsiders. However, hesniffed, ’I confess that I abhor them. I hold this body of rugs to be dis-honest’ (Leper, 1983: 13-14).

Today, despite the use of Tibetan identity to market carpets, fewwould argue that designs are ’traditional’ or static (or ever were). What-ever the origin of carpet designs, production is now an international

industry exceeding the control of Tibetan exile institutions or Westernpreservationists. Competition and innovation is leading to overproduc-tion, poor quality, and the separation of the ’Tibetan identity’ of carpetsfrom the actual identity of the producers or designers.

In addition to Nepali and Western entrepreneurs infiltrating andinfluencing the carpet industry, the People’s Republic of China also seesits export and tourist market potentials. The magazine Himal reportedthat a Nepali carpet company has entered a joint venture with the LhasaAdministration Bureau of National Handicrafts to design, produce, andsell carpets. The initial investment totaled US$ 4.6 million, a not insig-nificant sum for craft production. The partners planned to have 12 fac-tories operating in Tibet by 1997 (Patrakar, 1993).

One afternoon my wife, JoAnn Vrilakas, an anthropologist conduct-ing research on Tibetan nuns, interviewed a new arrival at a nunnery inDharamsala. JoAnn was surprised to discover the nun had worked in acarpet factory in occupied Tibet. Most of the rugs were sent to the Westand Japan, the nun believed, although sometimes tourists bought them.’Tibetans never bought them,’ she said, ’they didn’t like the colors.’ Not



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knowing JoAnn could understand, she turned to my wife’s translator anddeclared: ’They looked like shit!’

CONCLUSION

The benefits and problems associated with the growth of handicraftindustries are always unequal along the interpenetrating axes of class,gender, ethnicity, and nation. However, broad generalizations regardingthe social and cultural impacts of the commoditization of traditional artforms are likely to miss the complexities specific not only to each locale,but to each art form. Impacts vary tremendously with the political andeconomic structures of sites of production and marketing, as well as withthe multiple and contradictory meanings and values internal andexternal consumers attribute to tourist arts.

The case of Tibetan carpets illustrates that mass-produced touristarts can simultaneously remain mundane functional objects for theircommunity of origin while politically identifying and economically sup-porting that community even as these arts are radically altered by tech-nical innovations and the demands of external consumers. In such casesit is often foreign consumers who are most critical of artistic change, andwho push for a return to ’authenticity’, even to the extent of directingproduction.

What then is authenticity? The answer is another question: who isasking? Changes in craft production, form, and market induced bytourism do not call for foreign experts to distinguish (for whom?) the’genuine’ from the ’spurious’, nor for academics to continue beating thelong-dead corpse of essentialist authenticity. Rather, social scientistsshould describe indigenous forms of ’emergent authenticity’ as well asthe various criteria by which different markets and consumers constructthe authentic (Cohen, 1988). Interviews the author conducted withWestern travelers in Dharamsala reveal that authenticity for most con-sumers is defined by far less stringent criteria than those imagined bythe would-be saviors of Tibetan culture. Many travelers desire only asuitable ’souvenir’ - a good that carries memories by its recognizablelinks (real or imagined) to a particular place and time, and by its differ-ence from other, more familiar goods. There is often little demand forany genuine continuity with artistic traditions. Many tourists, however,do express the desire that their goods are actually manufactured byTibetans, ideally in homes or co-operative settings, for the purchase ofTibetan crafts is often considered a charitable or political act in supportof poor refugees and ’the Tibetan cause’. It is here that the Tibetan carpetindustry often falls short of even the most generous definitions of auth-enticity.

Bruner argues that if the issue of authenticity arises, we need to ask



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who has called it into doubt, and investigate struggles over cultural auth-ority (Bruner, 1994). We must also investigate the social relations thatmay be masked by claims to authenticity, including who benefits andwho is exploited in the production of authentic goods. Authenticity isthus a political and economic issue.

Like the written sign that escapes authorial control, material signsalso escape the control of their producers. Therein lies the appeal oftourist arts - the plasticity of their motifs and meanings facilitates theirpassage across geographic and cultural boundaries. Nevertheless, it is

possible to ’fix’ some meaning in the ’social life’ of handicrafts if we

ground our investigations in the lives of producers and the political andeconomic implications of commoditization, rather than exclusivelyindulging our fascination with the endless play of their signification.

AcknowledgementsThis research was in part funded with Grant #5489 from the Wenner-Gren Foun-dation for Anthropological Research.

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Cohen, Erik (1988) ’Authenticity and Commoditization in Tourism’, Annals ofTourism Research 15(3): 371-86.

Cook, Scott and Binford, Leigh (1986) ’Petty Commodity Production, CapitalAccumulation, and Peasant Differentiation: Lenin vs. Chayanov in RuralMexico’, Review of Radical Political Economics 18(4): 1-31.

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* E R I C MCGUCKIN is a PhD candidate in anthropology at the GraduateSchool of the City University of New York. This article arises out of his researchon tourism and Tibetan refugees conducted in India, Nepal, and Tibet from July1993 to January 1994. Address: 2235 NW Johnson #302, Portland, OR 97210, USA[email: [email protected]]



eric mcguckin - tibetan carpets (21 pp., 1997)

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