CIRCA: 1900 / early 1900’s
A ceremonial hand-towel or lap cover (Chaksi Pankhep) originally used only by the nobility in Bhutan. (Literally translated chaksi means ‘hand wash’ and pankhep means ‘lap cover’ in the Bhutanese language.) It is comprised of three individual hand woven panels that are then hand stitched together to make up the finished piece. The central horizontally designed panel is the widest and the design is woven in complementary-weft-faced weave, with a narrower vertical panel on either side of it, each being approximately half the size of the central panel. A great deal of work has gone into these two panels with each made up of five vertical design stripes which have been woven in an alternating weave format, that is the stripes alternate in the type of weave used in each stripe. That is, going from the edge stripe inwards they are woven in the following order; complementary-warp-faced weave: complementary-weft-faced weave: complementary-warp-faced weave: complementary-weft-faced weave: and finally complementary-warp-faced weave (right before the join to the center piece. This variation of the design weave can be seen in the example bottom row left which shows just three of the five strips. The base plain-weave cloth is very finely hand woven (75-80 warp threads per linear inch), i.e. top row right image above shows an area with a diameter of just 8.5mm x 8.5mm (1/3rd of an inch). The design consist of both hand-spun wild raw silk and hand-spun cotton and consist of four colours; primarily red and black, with orange and a grey in several of the horizontal central designs. [For similar published examples see pages 75 and 134, in the book From The Land Of The Thunder Dragon by Diana K Myers and Susan S Bean (1984)]
Collected in Nepal in the 1970’s, only the one owner since.