BHUTANESE TEXTILES – NOW AND TOMORROW
A REVIVAL IN THE ART OF WEAVING
Bhutanese textiles cannot help but catch the eye. Aside from their aesthetic appeal, Bhutanese textiles today reflect a dynamism that challenges the fear of traditional arts dying out when a culture encounters the ‘outside world’. Discovering the richness of the kingdom’s textile traditions is a treat for the casual traveller and connoisseur alike.
Textiles are not just an art but valued by the Bhutanese as a unique marker of their cultural and political identity. From flight attendants to people on the street, citizens everywhere wear their national dress – the gho, or men’s robe, and kira, a wrapped garment for women. In the late 1980s, machine-woven cloth featuring Bhutanese designs manufactured in India entered the market. Much less costly to create and far easier to care fro, this fabric quickly became very popular.
Inevitably, there was debate about what impact these imports would have. Would the factory product cause hand weaving to disappear? Would a craft that for centuries has incorporated new imported fibres and design influences, even co-existed with imported Chinese silks and Indian cottons, finally succumb? Happily, there are no signs of this.
Keysang Lhendup, a weaver and designer who learnt the craft from his mother, believes that weaving is enjoying a revival today. “The quality of weaving and design is better today. We are producing much more intricate designs and finer work,” he says. The Textile Museum in Thimphu has been a major factor in today’s vibrant textile scene. Supporting the Royal Government’s policy of cultural preservation, the museum was established in 1999 under the patronage of Her Majesty Ashi Sangay Choden Wangchuck. Its principal goal is to promote appreciation of weaving, one of Bhutan’s 13 traditional crafts, which includes thangkha painting, sculpture and wood turning. Of all those crafts, weaving has shown the most creative diversity and resulted in the greatest variety of products.
Traditional fibres and patterns – stripes, plaids, motifs, and colours – varied from region to region. Even now, lengths of fabric woven on backstrap and horizontal frame looms are stitched into clothing, blankets, and bags. There are outstanding examples of 19th and 20th century textiles at the museum.
The museum is also a significant force in promoting contemporary weaving. Its annual Textile Festival features weaving and dyeing demonstrations and a weaving competition with entries from all over Bhutan. This event culminates in a standing-room-only fashion show, as people flock to see Bhutanese youth model the competition’s selection of garments for women and men. The festival and prize money have clearly inspired many weavers, for each year there are more new colour combinations, intricate patterns, and dazzling reproductions of older designs. Prize-winning textiles are often snapped up even before the fashion show.
A new trend is the use of pastel colours – delicate pinks, blues, yellows, and earth tones – thanks to the choices of silk yarns available in India, Thailand, and designers’ imaginations. Another trend is kira patterning that contrasts subtly rather than boldly with the field colour. (Overall, the patterning of cloth in men’s gho shows far less innovation than in women’s dresses.) The Fashion Show also invites young Bhutanese designers to use hand-woven fabric in ‘collections’ of non-Bhutanese apparel.
The museum’s effort, and other government initiatives such as training in entrepreneurship, also aims to introduce Bhutanese textiles to the international market – and they highlight several challenges. Middle and upper class Bhutanese clearly appreciate skills at the loom and the use of the finest fibres, so a silk kira with intricate patterns and pleasing colour combinations will find a ready market, even when priced upwards of US$1,500. Thus, the domestic market consumes a steady supply of new weaving, thanks to the patronage of the many Bhutanese who can afford textiles that are beautiful and novel in colour and/or design.
Textiles are still produced mainly for Bhutanese and remain individual works of art rather than manufactured for a mass market. A skilled weaver’s talents are in high demand as young girls who once would have learned to weave at their mothers’ knees are now attending school. Given the strong local market for hand woven textiles and relatively high cost of fibres and labor, prices are rising rather than dropping. And why shouldn’t a weaver be paid well for her work when one intricate weaving may take months to complete?
Bhutan can learn from the experience with other traditional crafts around the world in marketing. The successful adaptation of Tibetan carpets for the Western market by modifying designs and colours is one example – albeit, from Nepal, where labour is very cheap. The ‘revival’ of Lao weaving in the past decade, with a focus on high-end, high-quality silk textiles is even more relevant.
Local ingenuity and the adaptive nature of indigenous weaving offer avenues for wider marketing. Some Bhutanese entrepreneurs who want to tap the tourist market are on the right track: developing new products – like finely woven table runners that are very affordable – that involve less labour and smaller quantities of silk or less costly materials.
The continuing challenges will be to customize or refine products, for example, sizing tablemats and shawls for non-Asian clients. To address issues of labour and cost, some Bhutanese designers are incorporating handwoven fabric as accents rather than ‘whole cloth’ in collections aimed at the Japanese and European markets.
Bhutanese textiles are alive and well today. Wherever one travels, the dress of ordinary Bhutanese, the furnishings of homes, and the hangings of homes, and the hangings that adorn temples and dzongs are a feast for the eyes. An afternoon of wandering through shops in Thimphu can be great fun, and with luck can result in a treasure or two to take home.
By Diana K. Myers, a member of the Advisory Council of the Textile Museum in Washington, DC