Tibet is home to a rich artistic heritage, including some of the world’s most treasured works of material and textile art. Particularly well represented within the Tibetan tradition are carpets; metalwork, including poles, singing bowls, and tingsha prayer chimes, and furniture, especially intricately painted trunks and cabinets. This book is an attractively presented, authoritative overview.

Drawing on a private collection, In the Land of the Snowlion brings together breathtakingly beautiful examples of traditional Tibetan material and textile art from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries. Many of the objects pictured play a central role in Tibetan culture, but their uses have remained relatively little known. Hand-woven or hand-knotted sheep’s wool rugs, for example, were often crafted for seating or riding, while highly ornamented poles were sometimes designed to support paintings. This lavish, large-format book fills this gap in the knowledge about Tibetan art and culture, with 450 full-color illustrations, as well as essays by the collectors, Michael and Justyna Buddeberg, and contributions from a distinguished group of international specialists in Tibetan art: Koos de Jong, Christiane Kalantari, Petra Maurer, Ulrike Montigel, H. H. Neumann, Lisa Niedermayr, Bruno Richtsfeld, Rupert Smith, Friedrich Spuhler, Elena Tsareva, Hans Weihreter, and Thoma Wild.

Some of the most beautiful and historically significant works of Tibetan art are in the Buddeberg Collection, and In the Land of the Snowlion makes them available to the public for the first time.