Celebration of the Dalai Lama’s Birthday
SubjectPortrait of
Tsering Yangzom
(Tibetan)
PhotographerPhotographed by
Lynne Williamson
Date1997
MediumPhotography
ClassificationsGraphics
Credit LineConnecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program collections
CopyrightCopyright Held By Lynne Williamson
Object number2015.196.230.1-.3
DescriptionPhotographs showing Tsering Yangzom and other Connecticut Tibetans celebrating the Dalai Lama’s birthday in July 1997 at David Brown’s yard in Old Saybrook, Connecticut.
2015.196.230.1-.2: Photographs showing Tsering Yangzom and others at the outdoor celebration of the Dalai Lama's birthday.
2015.196.230.3: Photograph of the outdoor celebration of the Dalai Lama's birthday, with visitors, a Tibetan monk, and costumed dancers from New York City.
NotesBiographical Note: Tsering Yangzom (Tseyang) weaves belts with traditional designs on her backstrap loom as well as wool material for blankets, aprons, jackets, and bags on a larger loom. Her skill, learned from her mother in a remote village on the Nepal/Tibet border, is one traditionally shared by rural women. When she was seven years old Tsering Yangzom's family fled Tibet, settling in a remote Nepali village near the Tibetan border. It was difficult for Tibetan exiles to make a new life there as they were foreigners, bringing few possessions and little money with them. One way for families to generate both income and necessary household furnishings was to utilize women's traditional weaving skills. Tseyang's mother made blankets, bags, warm coats - chupa, and married women's traditional striped aprons - pang-dhen out of cloth she wove from dyed sheeps' wool, as well as small carpets and seat coverings. These were also sold in shops in the town. 2015.196.230.1-.2: Photographs showing Tsering Yangzom and others at the outdoor celebration of the Dalai Lama's birthday.
2015.196.230.3: Photograph of the outdoor celebration of the Dalai Lama's birthday, with visitors, a Tibetan monk, and costumed dancers from New York City.
Tseyang and her younger sister were taught to card and spin yarn from sheeps' wool, and weave it into cloth, a common practice for Tibetan women. In school all children learned to make the patterned belts that Tibetans tie around their chupa. Later Tseyang worked in a factory handweaving Tibetan carpets as this industry grew in Nepal.
Tseyang brought to her new home in Old Saybrook the traditional narrow loom she used to weave belts, although she could not bring with her the larger loom for cloth. Belts are made on a thak-ti, a tension loom which uses a process called tablet weaving to create quite complex designs on belts up to six inches wide. Pierced thin leather cards, or tablets, are strung side by side onto individual vertical warp threads. Tension on the warp threads is provided as the weaver pulls against the threads attached to a backstrap tied around her waist. As she pulls, she rotates all the tablets at once, an action which moves some warp threads up and some down to create a space between them, in the manner of a heddle. She passes a thread horizontally through this space in a weaving motion, pushes it down tightly with a wooden beater, then rotates the tablets again to lift another set of warp threads before weaving again. The pattern is determined by the number of tablets strung onto certain colors of warp threads. In another photograph of this loom Tseyang has seven tablets strung with dark threads on either side, with twenty-four white thread cards between them, to make a simple two-color belt. Tseyang moved to Torrington CT then New York City to live.
"When we took refuge from Tibet and had no farms to grow things, to make a living, to survive we had to do this kind of thing...there was nothing we could do but making and selling cloth, blankets, bags, belts...the first thing is to keep the traditions of our culture. Second thing is when we lost our country Tibet, when the Chinese took over, there's no way to do other business. To survive we did this...the same things in Nepal as Tibet."
Biographical Note: David Brown is an American Buddhist and painter in Old Saybrook Connecticut. He was an advisor and organizer of the Tibetan Cultural Center of Connecticut, the community's spiritual and social gathering place in the 1990s and early 2000s at his home where he encouraged the building of a stupa on his land. An original member of the Resettlement Project in Connecticut and sponsor of several Tibetans, he served the community through social support, job location, legal and technical advice, and networking assisting Tibetans in Connecticut, especially when the first group arrived in 1992.
Additional materials exist in the CCHAP archive for this community.
Cataloging Note: This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services MA-245929-OMS-20.
Status
Not on view
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