Recently in Tibetan handicrafts Category

Our new Beijing flagship store has just opened at Europlaza, in the Shunyi district. We are on the ground floor, between Coldstone ice cream and Comptoire de France cafe (two of my favorite treats in Beijing that had absolutely NOTHING to do with my choosing this spot, probably)

Celebrations, yes, but from a personal standpoint it's more about heaving a big sigh of relief. This last year has been even crazier than normal in Beijing (and it does get very crazy here for retailers).

As some will remember we had a nice store in Danshui town in Shunhuang road, a beautiful courtyard development that unfortunately stood in the way of "progress" in the area just south of the river. It was demolished a few months back, along with the entire south side of the street (though some buildings are still standing and things seem to have ground to a halt for the time being). In typical Beijing fashion the stores along that side of the road got 40 days notice from the local government to clear out. We managed to keep the business running, with the help of Ms Wang of the Dynasty furniture store directly opposite where Danshui used to be, who rented some space in her store to us at short notice. Credit also to my staff and to our decorations company who renovated a space in Dynasty and fitted carpet rails, lighting etc in the space of a week. Looking back I am still not sure how we did it.

The Dynasty store remains open, and we have our collection of antique rugs (especially Khotan and Kirgiz rugs) and also Afghan rugs and kilims there. I am not sure what the fate of the north side of Shunhuang road will be: there are rumors that it will be redeveloped this year too but the timing is uncertain. Now that we have the Europlaza store open I am less "zhao ji" about it.

I have never been a "mall kind of guy", but I've seen the writing on the wall as regards some of the more "characterful" projects hereabouts that I would otherwise be attracted to. Beijing is expanding, and what used to be countryside is fast becoming "downtown". There are some lovely courtyard developments and individual projects around north Beijing, but many will eventually fall prey to compulsory purchase and redevelopment just as we did. Landlords get some compensation as long as they have a structure built on the land they have leased (which explains some of the mysterious dash to construct apparently empty buildings on many sites in north Beijing), but businesses that rent these spaces get nothing.

Hence the choice of a mall this time. Europlaza is big and solid looking, has several floors so I am hoping it won't be demolished any time soon :-)

I am pleased with how the new store has turned out (once again, credit due to staff and contractors for a job well done).  Europlaza is well-maintained space in a good central location (at least for Shunyi area residents, a bit of a trek for those coming from downtown I admit), with good parking and space to let the kids roam safely. There are still some units that are not let on the upper floors, but the supermarket is open in the basement and proving popular.

We continue to focus on costs, which is why I'd love a large downtown store but it is unlikely to happen any time soon. Beautiful handmade carpets are not cheap, but we don't want them to cost more than they need to, and don't want to pay downtown rents that would make them unaffordable. So we will stick with locations some way from town, and hope that downtown residents will make the trip to see our store and buy a carpet at a reasonable price ... and also take advantage of designs and customization service that you can't find anywhere else.

There are contact details, maps and so on for our Beijing stores on our website.

Our air purifier store (Torana Clean Air Center), selling Blueair air filters, is also in the same location.

A search on Google of "organic rug" or "organic carpet" gets plenty of hits, but are any of the products on offer actually organic? I tried the experiment this morning, and at first sight it might appear that there are lots of organic rugs on offer. Many vendors are using descriptors such as "natural" and "organic design", or calling their sites "Organic store", but despite attempts to imply that the products are organic none of the products on offer had organic certification. A few rug sites in the Middle East and Africa made outright "organic" claims but could not offer any certification information to back this up.

There is organic wool on offer for knitting and blanket-making, so why not organic carpets? A little understanding of the materials and process that goes into a handmade carpet reveals why.

The key feature of a handmade rug (or any good rug for that matter) is that the wool used is sufficiently strong and has a long enough staple length to make a durable carpet. A floor rug is an "extreme textile", meaning that it has to take far more punishment than a sweater, for example, and so correspondingly tough wool is needed. In practice this means wool from specialized carpet sheep living at altitude, which grow the long coats required for this grade of wool. High altitude pastures are very large since the grazing is sparse, and nearly all the breeds of sheep have to be tended over migratory routes, sometimes involving hundreds of kilometers of travel, usually by nomadic herders. Wool for our Torana Tibetan carpets for example comes mainly from the mountainous regions in the far west of Tibet, where the pastures are vast.

This poses a major problem for gaining organic certification. The requirements for certification can be seen on the Organic Trade Association website; there are several, but the key one is "Livestock feed and forage used from the last third of gestation must be certified organic", something that is in practical terms impossible for sheep in large open pastures without fences or clear boundaries. Since nomad-produced wool typically comes from many different nomad families it is also very difficult to certify that pesticides are not used. As far as I am aware there are no grades of carpet wool produced in traditional areas that have gained organic certification for these logistical reasons, hence no truly organic rugs.

In the case of Tibetan wool used in our own rugs we are sure that there are no pesticides or disallowed materials used on the grasslands, since it would be impossible for the nomadic herders to use chemicals over the thousands of square kilometers of upland pasture that their sheep range over, but it is unlikely that we will ever be able to prove this. Similarly, cash-poor nomad families are not in the habit of using the pesticides that lowland intensive farmers use, but we are unlikely to be able to prove this to the satisfaction of an organic certification body. Sheep herders and carpet makers in other traditional areas face similar barriers.

For the would-be buyer of carpets there are several conclusions. Firstly, good carpet wool is amongst the least toxic and most environmentally benign of all materials used in contemporary furnishings, yet seeking an "organic" certified wool rug is chasing a mirage. Secondly, in the search for a safe, non-toxic rug pay attention instead to post-processing, dyeing, carpet construction and so forth. Are good quality, non-toxic dyes used? Is it a true handmade rug (good), or a latex/synthetic rubber backed product (bad)?

Buying a pure wool rug is one of the best things you can do for the environment and for your home, the materials are non-toxic and recyclable, and produced in a low-impact way. But for the benefits to become apparent the carpet industry needs to focus on the facts rather than putting up a natural/organic smokescreen in the hopes of fooling customers, while would-be rug users need to educate themselves about what is really important.

The Tibet Artisan Initiative (TAI) will be familiar to some Beijing residents who have visited Lhasa and bought handicrafts from their fine handicrafts center there, called Dropenling. The TAI is a not-for-profit organisation that assists traditional artisans in designing and marketing items of high quality that can sell internationally. This in turn generates much needed income that helps sustain rural communities in Tibet.

This year the TAI is bringing its handicrafts to Beijing and will be attending fairs and bazaars in the run up to Christmas, mostly during the last week in November and the first week in December. My company (Torana) is helping out with logistical support and publicity. 100% of the proceeds from sales will go to the TAI.

The handicrafts include the famous Wangden carpets that are made only in a small valley near Shigatse (and recently featured in exhibitions in London and Rome), Tibetan flatweave fabrics, dolls (see the snow lion below), painted wooden items and more.

There are seven of the TAI's Tibetan employees in town to support the fairs. Come along and meet them! I will be attending some of the fairs and helping out on the stands too. I have posted a list of the fairs on my site at this link.

For those Beijing residents in search of somewhat larger carpets to keep their feet warm this winter Torana is also holding a sale at our Shunyi area store with some large reductions on fine handmade area rugs ... more details on this and a location map for our Shunyi store on our website.

Following my last posting on the Snow Lion doll designed by Susie Vickery and Tibetan artisans at the Dropenling handicrafts center in Lhasa, Susie wrote from Lhasa enclosing some photos of prototypes for next season that she is working on.

Seen here are two new glove puppets with Tiger and Snow Lion designs. These will be on sale in Dropenling next year. The gentleman in the center is Arthur Holcombe, founder of the Tibet Poverty Alleviation fund and the Dropenling center. He is not for sale.