Most Tibetan furniture was originally produced by monks and used in monasteries to store religious items. The pieces have a uniquely spiritual quality but are usually of a fairly crude construction.

Typically, the furniture is painted using beautiful, colorful and meaningfully symbolic decorations such as flaming pears or eternal knots.
 

Favorite colors included gold, red and green. Fortunately, Tibetan furniture is increasingly being integrated into many different styles of home décor and we hope that a new book devoted solely to the subject, "Wooden Wonders; Tibetan furniture in secular and religious life", written by David Kaminsky, published in 2004, will generate the interest in Tibetan furniture that it deserves.