Houses & Furniture of Tibet, 1920s
"Tibetan houses are usually of two or three storeys, often of more, many having five or six storeys. In districts where stones are plentiful the outside walls are made of…
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
From We Tibetans: An Intimate Picture, by a Woman of Tibet, of an Interesting and Distinctive People, by Rin-Chen Lha-Mo, 1926.
Houses & Furniture
Tibetan houses are usually of two or three storeys, often of more, many having five or six storeys. In districts where stones are plentiful the outside walls are made of them, elsewhere, they are made of earth. The stone walls are made of rough stones laid upon each other in a setting of mud in the place of your mortar. You must not use round stones. We have a saying that the round stone brings the wall down, the round man makes trouble; referring to small squat men, a type often pugnacious of temperament. If well made these walls are very durable. Our people are very skilled in this work.
Our walls of earth or of stone are very thick. Heavy logs resting on them and on heavy wooden pillars support the floor above. Floors are of wooden boards like yours or of earth beaten hard on a bedding of brushwood. Our roofs are flat and made of earth beaten hard. They are impervious to rain and snow.
People do not live on the ground floor. It is our stabling, our horses and cattle are kept there. We use the rooms above. These do not take up the whole surface area, there being spaces left open for use as verandahs and threshing floors.
The outer walls are carried up on this side and that above the actual roof, and a light roof supported by logs resting on the top of these walls and on pillars opposite covers a narrow shed or two. In these sheds, which are open to the sunshine, we put our Ney to dry and air before it is threshed.
There will always be a line or two of flags stretched across the roof on cords. They flutter in the wind. They are prayer flags. You have something similar in idea in the religious mottoes I have seen on some of your walls. On the roof there is also a large burner made of earth, which looks something like a stove. In it we burn juniper branches. We go up to the roof at dawn and light the juniper and blow a call on a conch-shell bugle. It is a religious observance with which we start our days.
Almost all houses are square or oblong. Some houses are built on the sides of the ground space, with an open space in the centre, others are compact and have their compounds around them bounded by stone or earth walls.
The windows are small and square. They are seldom of glass, often they are papered in the Chinese style, mostly they merely have wooden shutters.
The inner walls of the living rooms and the partitions between rooms are often made of heavy logs or of wooden boards. Stairways are of wooden boards like yours, or often they consist of notched logs. These latter can easily be drawn up and access from below cut off.
The average house in the countryside is a stronghold in itself, good for defence. The houses of the chiefs, the Kings and Princes of Kham, and of Tibetan governors are indeed forts. Some can hold thousands of men and animals.
The houses of the well-to-do are well decorated. The walls of the living-rooms are panelled with wood, and panels and ceilings and pillars are often painted with pictorial designs. Some of these rooms are beautifully painted. The walls are sometimes hung with tapestries or with pictures painted in colours on silk or canvas. Such pictures are always of a religious character.
The rooms are often furnished with carved and polished tables and chairs, and with great wooden chests decorated, like the wails, with painted designs. In the place of your upholstered furniture we have great thick cushions or rather, mattresses. They are packed tight with musk-deer wool, or with straw, and bound in leather or cloth. They are like your sofas and arm-chairs without the sides and backs. On such the well-to-do Tibetan sits and sleeps, while the poorer classes sit and sleep on rough rugs made of sheep-wool.
Our kitchen ranges are made of stone and earth. Household utensils and ornaments are numerous and varied. They are of earthenware, iron, steel, wood, copper, silver, gold. Copper is the most used of the metals.
Practically all our metalware comes from the Derge district of Kham where the smiths are especially skilled in the working of metal.
The tent of the drokpa is spacious and high. It is made of yak-hair canvas. The drokpa make it themselves. An ordinary tent will hold five or six people comfortably, and some are big enough for ten or more. Inside the tent, near the entrance, is a rough kitchen-range made of stones. It is kitchen-range and camp-fire in one. A long narrow aperture along the top of the tent lets out the smoke. This ventilator may be closed at will. The tent is impervious to rain and snow. Tent-dwellers naturally require very little furniture. The drokpa will have his cooking utensils, various churns and buckets, saddlery, rugs, leather-bags and so on. The various properties will be neatly stacked to divide the tent into two or more recesses wherein the family sit and sleep on thick rugs spread on the ground.
Lha-Mo, Rin-Chen. We Tibetans: An Intimate Picture, by a Woman of Tibet, of an Interesting and Distinctive People. Seeley Service & Co. 1926.
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