IIt's not a very good picture, but then, I'm not a very good photographer. It's a Tibetan rug, monochromatic and undramatic, but in my opinion, extremely handsome. Sometime during the 1970s, a store selling Tibetan antiques opened in Boulder, stayed with us for a very few months, and then closed. I fell deeply and passionately in love with this rug, all the more so because its price was greatly reduced during the closing fire-sale.
The rug is supposed to be "old" and it certainly wasn't recently knotted. It was represented to me as being made of yak hair, but MP, our rug expert, fingered it and said, "No, that's wool." MP wouldn't hazard a guess about its age, but he did enlighten me about the symbolism: the three cranes in the center panel signify longevity; the four corner figures are "happy bats," and happiness is also figured by the four very small, almost unnoticeable, swastikas. So it's a joyful rug. There are also many snakes and a number of figures that MP couldn't identify. It's remotely possible that this rug was originally some sort of monastic bench cover and that each of the crane figures represented a place to sit. I doubt this theory because the sitters would have had to be very small monks with tiny tushies.
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