Arts and crafts of Bhutan
The art of weaving
In the high eastern mountain villages you will come across women weaving in the open-air with their back strap looms. They are Bhutan's weavers who practise their trade on the open mountainside or field singing gently as they rock back and forth.
Yarns and thread are dyed (using vegetable dye) and dried for weeks before being woven into traditional Gho and Kira. These long flowing garments have become the obligatory national dress of the kingdom. Weavers produce raw silk, silk on cotton, and silk on silk textiles. The finest weavers are found in Lhuentse, Kuri Chu, and Radhi areas of eastern Bhutan. This art is passed down from generation to generation.
Since the crops grown are usually just enough to feed the village in a good year, these hand-loomed textiles become a good way for the village to get money for supplies. A complete Kira is made up from three pieces sewn together to form a large rectangular piece which is draped and folded around a woman's body and clinched in at the waist with a kera (belt).The entire weaving process takes between six months to one year to complete. The Bhutanese prize these textiles so highly that they are considered part of a family's wealth and our used as currency.
In the far east of Bhutan, it is not uncommon come across teams of women seated on valley slopes with a heavy leather belt strapped fast to their waists. The women will be heaving a wooden slat across recently dyed fabric; pursuing an age-old custom that creates the vivid patterns and colours that have become synonymous with Bhutanese design.
Woven products are sold all over Bhutan. Lengths of material hang from rafters making colorful displays. In Doksum, near to Gom Kora, material hangs from almost every home and women sit on balconies in almost every village weaving.
So unique are the Bhutanese weaving techniques that the United States’ Peabody Museum at Salem, Massachusetts, organized a worldwide exhibition solely on this subject.
