Tibetan Wall-Hangings

Meet Pasang

He is originally from Tibet but came to Kathmandu at the age of 8 as he fled Tibet and the cultural revolution with his grandfather. Later on in 1998, Pasang discovered this new form of Tibetan art by collecting old and damaged aprons from across the Himalayas that him and his team restored in order to create this new, beautiful patchwork art.    

Pasang

 

Pasang's Wall Hanging Art

The tradition of Tibetan aprons

Pangden are the aprons worn by women of Tibet over their long dresses, so-called chubas. These pandgens are used to identify if the woman is married, and it also indicates which region of Tibet she is from. To illustrate this, here below are Tibetan women in their aprons doing Kora at Tashilungpo in Shigatse, Tibet. 
Tibetan women in aprons

Rediscovering an ancient textile 

The sheep wool yarn that is used in these Pangden Tibetan Wall Hangings are naturally dyed from individual Nomad family households and the wool that they use have been collected from the ground. The majority of Tibetans are Buddhist and therefore they do not shave off the wool directly from the sheep.   

The textiles that are used for these pieces of Wall Hanging Art have been discarded in Tibet a long time ago - even up to 100-300 years ago! and they are very hard to find today. This makes each piece unique and it makes it impossible to recreate the same piece twice.

The art of natural dye

The techniques of natural dye that were used were done by Nomad families, ranging all the way from Kailash to Ngari in western Tibet, exchanged between one household to another on old trade routes. Some of the examples of natural dye are saffron used for the color yellow, indigo used for the color blue, madder or iron rust used for the color red and other imported herbs from Nepal were used for the dyeing process as well.