A small studio for a slow art.

Thangka Studio is a new online home for hand-painted thangkas. We are still setting up: the listings you see are samples used to build the site, and we will publish details of our painters, materials and sourcing here before the first piece goes on sale.

What a thangka is

A thangka is a scroll painting on cotton or silk from the Himalayan Buddhist world — Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, Ladakh and Mongolia. It is portable by design: rolled up for travel, unrolled for teaching, ritual or meditation. For centuries thangkas have served as a support for visualisation practice, as a record of lineages and as offerings.

Why they are painted the way they are

Thangka painting is not free composition. Proportions are fixed by iconometric grids handed from teacher to student; colours, gestures and implements carry specific meaning. A painter typically trains for years before completing a full figure independently. The skill lies in precision, the quality of line and the subtlety of shading within those rules.

What we intend to do

Describe every painting plainly — subject, size, grade, materials — photograph it honestly, and tell you who painted it. Until we can do that for a piece, it will not be listed for sale.