Ethical, Sustainable Luxury from Tibetan Plateau. Stories from Norlha

Ritoma

Picnic 1

Tibetan picnics are a world unto themselves, a celebration of summer, of blue skies with billowing clouds, of green expanses; a time to enjoy n...

Clothing

In Tibet, men and women wear the same outer garment, the chuba, though they do it in different ways. The women wear their chubas ankle length, ...

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Andrew Taylor is from Los Angeles, California and this is his second year at Norlha. Andrew is a tutor to two little girls during the day, and ...

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Mud walls, often seen as the poorer relative to stone, have stood the test of time as well, if not better than their stone counterparts. Among ...

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Willard Johnson is from Seattle, Washington. He studied at MIT and after graduating pursued his passion for basketball, playing on teams in Aus...

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Compassion is the core of Buddhist practice. Developed through mind training, it is generated by considering all sentient beings as one’s mothe...

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For Norlha employees, who lived as nomads, work at the atelier is a new chapter in their lives. Though sheltered from the snow, rain and snow, ...

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Traditional nomad women have hard lives. The generation of women now in their sixties typically bore a dozen children, many having experienced ...

Home

As Norlha grew, the small, original buildings that had been built on a low budget around the interior of the south wall were replaced with bett...

Home

My parents loved beautiful tableware. I inherited dozens of tablecloths, tea and coffee cups, dishes which my father hand painted, silver platt...

Ritoma

The 15th rule in Norlha’s rule book clearly states, “No playing within the walls of the atelier.” Tibetan nomads love to play. In the winter i...

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The market economy slowly crept onto the plateau in the '90s as markets began to explode in China. In the old days, goods were scarce and hard ...