Hand-painted boxes discovered in a craft tent in Bhutan.

Probably the most interesting part of any tour to new country for me is experiencing the opportunity to see the local arts and crafts. I realize from my many years of collecting that I love folk art!

During one of our first days of touring, we visited a craft school where children were learning traditional Bhutanese arts and crafts. This was a good introduction to the array of items made in Bhutan. Traditional skills or crafts are defined as zorig chusum. ‘Zo’ means the ability to make, ‘rig’ stands for the science or craft, ‘chusum’ is thirteen — as there are thirteen traditional crafts recognized. Many of these practices have been gradually developed through the centuries and are often passed down through families with long-standing relations to a particular craft. We saw children learning to do traditional embroidery, called ‘tshenzo’, which means working with needle and thread on clothes, boots or appliqued ‘thangkas’ (religious wall hangings).  Other children were learning to carve masks, most often in the image of demons. Some were painting and drawing; others were working in sculpture.

We also visited a paper factory. ‘Dezo’ is the craft of making handmade paper, mainly from the Daphne plant and gum from a creeper root. While it was very interesting seeing how the pulp was boiled down and then transformed into sheets, I can’t say that I was very impressed with any of the end products. We were told that the workers were paid by the number of pieces that each one completed even though it was somewhat of an assembly line process. The woman who was smoothing out the initial sheets of paper from a tub of water looked like she had the most difficult job, with her hands in and out of water all day long. The sheets of wet paper were dried on large heated boards standing like over-sized ladders.

Young women doing traditional weaving in a local craft shop in Paro.

I regularly made the rounds of tourist stores featuring arts and crafts. One store we visited had a whole wall of young women working on looms, making traditional Bhutanese weavings. These weavings are mostly turned into ‘kiras’ — the traditional Bhutanese skirt for women. A kira is a length of fabric which is rolled around the body like a full-length skirt. It was in that store that I bought myself a traditional silk jacket worn by the Bhutanese women, along with the ‘under jacket’ which was a plain silk color to coordinate with the fancier top jacket — the collar and cuffs of the sleeves are pulled up and over the top jacket. I also bought a couple of smaller weavings similar to scarves in size.

My best find was two little painted wooden boxes. These wooden boxes are traditionally used for storing or transporting food such as butter or cheese. They are usually just plain colored balsam wood — but these boxes are painted in Bhutanese designs. I have them displayed on my bookcases.

Prayer beads are found in quantity in Bhutan. Many are new, but many are also old beads which I opted to buy. I have two sets that I will wear as they are — one is a string of turquoise beads and the other is a string of yellow/gold beads. I bought another two strings to take apart and use to make some authentic tribal jewelry. One set of beads is  made of carved yak bone and infused with turquoise and silver. The other is a string of dark beads with turquoise specks showing through.

Necklace made with Bhutanese prayer beads carved out of yak bone with added antique silver beads from India and natural stone.