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Over the past several centuries, Regong art artisans traveled to many different regions to create different works, such as Qinghai Province, Tibetan Autonomous Region, Gansu Province, Sichuan Province, the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region and other places in China, as well as India, Nepal, Thailand, Mongolia and other countries in the world, leaving behind numerous exquisite art works. They assimilated artistic nourishment from Tibetan paintings, Dunhuang murals and foreign similar works and then combined them with local folk arts of Qinghai Province to gradually consummate the techniques of Regong art.

The unpretentious painting style, even and harmonious color arrangements and realism of Regong artworks fully reflect Tibetan culture, making the art a curiosity hard to come by in China’s cultural heritage.

Major types of Regong art

Barbola: This is a special art that employs the techniques of “cutting” and “piling” to portray objects. In terms of specific techniques, barbola can be subcategorized into “jian dui” (literally, to “cut and pile”) and “ci xiu ” (“embroidery”). The barbola works in Regong are mainly of the jian dui style. To make jian dui barbola, artisans select silks and satins of different colors according to type of expression desired, cut them into human, animal, flower and bird shapes of a certain size, and then paste the patterns onto the pre-cut paper models. After that, they are stacked from dense to light colors. Since the middle of the barbola is slightly convex, the work creates a strong three-dimensional effect that looks like a colored embossment made of silk material. Barbola subjects generally come from Buddhist stories, and most of them are about people. Barbola pays much attention to posture and the details of human figures, and values the arrangement of silks and satins of different colors. It features an exquisite touch amid roughness, gives prominence to its major subjects, has vivid colors and forms a strong contrast. Barbola is an innovation in embroidery art, combining embroidery and embossment.

（Source: chinaculture.org）