A WOOL RUG KNOTTED IN THE SHAPE OF A TIGER PELT

Description:

Tibet, before 1990
242 x 134 cm
Throughout the East, the tiger has long been associated with such qualities as strength, dignity and courage. For the Chinese the tiger is "Lord of all land animals", and is taken as the emblem of magisterial dignity and severity, and as the model for the courage and fierceness that should be displayed by a soldier. Tiger skins duly became metaphors of power: they are supposed to transmit the tiger's vital energy, strength and valour to those who sit, kneel or recline on them. Accordingly, they were used widely in the East as mats or seat covers for figures of very high secular and spiritual status - and when real tiger pelts were unavailable, rugs and textiles with tiger-pattern motifs were used instead. Tiger skins had powerful religious associations too, and are represented in many early paintings, serving as mats for Sufi ascetics, Hindu yogis and Buddhist irate deities. For Buddhists they are associated with the efforts one has to make to tame the wildness of one's ego-centred mind through ritual practices. Eastern rugs with tiger motifs are generally associated with the 19th and 20th centuries, and with Tibetan rather than Chinese craftsmanship.
From the collection of Gerd-Wolfgang Essen (1930-2007), assembled between the 1950s and 1980s
Minor traces of usage.