The dating of Chinese rugs has long been controversial, and, over the years, there have often been extravagant claims for rugs that are surely less than a century old. Slowly however, grouping have emerged which allow the division of Chinese rugs into those with handspun foundation yarns, which there is good reason to assign to the first two thirds of the 19th century or earlier, and rugs with machine-spun cotton foundations, which may be assigned to a later period. read more......

Posted September 17, 2004

A rock art tradition found on the highest parts of the Tibetan plateau chronicles at least 3000 years of a fascinating but little known civilization. Centered in the northern and western regions of Tibet, the broad extent of this rock art is just now coming to light. The prehistoric phase of this tradition was produced by the same people who created the Zhang zhung kingdom in the period before Buddhist domination some 1400 years ago. read more.....

Posted September 17, 2004

The subject of tribal origins of Tibetan rugs has been discussed previously in this journal, perhaps to the point of belaboring this non-issue, but, due to the general unfamiliarity with the art form, I felt it has been necessary to discuss the question at length. However, the existence of tribal rugs in Tibet, and the probability of nomadic production, does not preclude (nor dismiss) the existence of a sophisticated production from a sedentary population. read more.....

Posted October 28, 2006

The appearance of a number of rugs from East Turkestan in recent auctions and the record setting prices achieved for many of them prompted me to take a closer look at the literature on these rugs. At the same time, I knew of a large group of these rugs in the inventory of Timur Shah of Afghanistan's Nomadic Rugs in Atlanta. I conducted a structural analysis of several and sent samples of the colors of seven to Paul Mushak for dye analysis. The following article and Dr. Mushak's accompanying dye study report the results of this survey. read more...

Posted September 3, 2007 NEW !!