| The Ming period and far into that
of the Ching Dynasty, woolen rugs for the “Kang”, temple floor
mats, prayer rugs and woolen hangings came from the northern
border area of China. Kansu, Suiyuan, Shensi and Shanxi all
provided rugs used in China as did many distant areas reached
over the old Silk Road.
The later areas included Tibet, Mongolia but also areas
outside Chinese control. Northern Shansi, Suiyuan and Ninghsia
were all famous for the quality of their carpets. These rugs
were predominantly made from wool and camel hair, which were
both abundant in these areas. An example of this work, which
was also done in Buddhist designs, is a carpet from Lou Lan
in Chinese Turkestan which is made of wool pile and whose
colors still remain bright despite the passage of time.
From historical records, it appears that no wool looms were
in use in Beijing until the very early 1860s. In 1860, a Buddhist
priest named Ho Chi-ching, started a weaving school at Paoku
for the poor of Beijing. This proved successful and the school
divided into a Western gate and Eastern gate schools. Later,
the Western gate school moved to Tientsin where it developed
a tradition of making very durable camel wool carpets decorated
with simple geometrical patterns in red, blue and brown.
In the later years of the 1800s, the quality of the rug
making had deteriorated markedly. The Tientsin wool rug industry
collapsed completely with the fall of the Ching dynasty. In
the 1930s the rug industry was restarted in both Tientsin
and Shanghai with the aid of western capital. In 1949, the
tradition was further transplanted to Hong Kong and other
points in Asia where it carries on the tradition through more
modern techniques. |
