Chiniot on the Chenab is the woodcarving town of Punjab. Its craftsmen carve furniture, doors, screens and ceilings in shisham with deep relief and brass and bone inlay, and they have done so for centuries.
Chiniot carvers worked on the Golden Temple at Amritsar, on the Wazir Khan mosque at Lahore, and on buildings across northern India. The craft is a specific local tradition with a specific vocabulary of pattern.
The Shahi Mosque at Chiniot, built in the seventeenth century by Nawab Sadullah Khan, Shah Jahan's wazir, is one of the finer Mughal buildings in Pakistan.
The town is also the origin of several of Pakistan's largest business families.
Punjabi woodcarving of this quality exists in one town on one side of the border, and Kartarpur in Jalandhar district makes furniture on the other side with no contact between them.
The wood is mostly sheesham and the work is deep relief carving, with pinjra lattice and inlay. A single large piece takes months and is made by a team.
The trade survived because the families kept it inside the family. The apprenticeship is domestic and takes years, and there is no institution teaching it.
The town's business families moved into textiles and industry in Pakistan after 1947 and several of that country's largest groups came out of the community.