Our items of Tibetan origin in one place
There's a new collection on the Silk Road Gallery website - the Tibet Collection. We've gathered the Tibetan items already on the site into one collection and added some new pieces.
New items include a selection of the aromatic earthy Tibetan incense that we love and that gives the characteristic aroma to our showroom in Sheffield.
These old painted wooden vases are in fact Tibetan tea containers. The insides of the wood have been bored out and still have the characteristic woody smell of Tibetan tea mixed with Yak milk. The outside surfaces are painted with auspicious Tibetan Buddhist symbols such as the conch and eight spoked wheel.
A visitor to Tibet and the Buddhist Himalayan regions of Ladakh, Bhutan and Nepal will have memories of the magical sounds of Tibet and we've added a Damaru drum to our Tibetan longhorns, now back in stock. The Bhutanese lute pictured is no longer in stock.
The emblematic animal of Tibet is the Snow Lion, this painting is part of a large painted wooden door depicting a Snow Lion, above which is a Garuda, a mythical half bird creature often represented in throughout the Himalaya.
Tibetan Blankets - one of the most popular items in the Gallery, especially in winter - are also in this collection. They're soft and warm. The colours are mostly vibrant reds and blues but there are also more unusualness like this Black Stripey colour.
Our last trip to Tibet was in 2014 when we drove to Far Western Tibet to the remains of the 11th century kingdom of Guge and Tsaparang. We then headed back east to Lake Manosarovar and Mount Kailash, known to the Tibetans as Kang Rinpoche, Holy Snow Mountain. With hundreds of Tibetan we trod the kora around Kang Rinpoche, one of the high points of our lives.
At Chiu monastery on the shores of Lake Manosarovar we met this exuberant Tibetan pilgrim who wanted his photo taken, like us he was heading to Kailash. In the Photos collection there are photos from our many visits to Ladakh and Zanskar, Indian Buddhist regions that are extensions of the Tibetan plateau.
