The History of the Shawl

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

Kashmir Textiles-Shawls, Namdas, Gubbas

 

Kashmir a state in India, parts of which are disputed territory between India and Pakistan, was a pivotal point through which the wealth, knowledge, and products of ancient India passed to the

 

 

world. Perhaps the most widely known woven textiles are the famed Kashmir shawls, such as the Kanikar of intricately woven designs that are formalized imitations of Nature. The Chenar leaf (plane tree leaf), apple and cherry blossoms, the rose and tulip, the almond and pear, the nightingale— are done in deep mellow tones of maroon, dark red, gold yellow and browns. Another type of Kashmir shawl is the Jamiavr, which is a brocaded woolen fabric often in pure wool and sometimes with a little cotton added.

The floral designing appears like heavy embroidered weave in dull silk or soft pashmina wool, and usually comprises small or large flowers delicately sprayed and combined; some shawls have net-like patterns with floral motifs. Still another of the Kashmir shawl is the Dourukha, a woven shawl done to produce the same effect on both sides. This is a unique piece of craftsmanship, in which a multi-coloured pattern scheme is woven on the surface after the shawl is completed, the rafugar (expert embroiderer) works the outlines of the motifs in darker shades to bring into relief the beauty of design. This attractive mode of craftsmanship not only produces a shawl which is reversible because of the perfect workmanship on both sides, but combines the crafts of both weaving and embroidery and religious beliefs in the shawls.

The most expensive shawls, called Shatoosh, are made from the beard hairs of the wild ibex and are so fine that a whole shawl can be pulled through a small finger ring.

cashmere shawl factory

 

The naksha, a Persian device like the Jacquard loom invented centuries later, enabled Indian weavers to create sinuous floral patterns and creeper designs in brocade to rival any painted by a brush. The Kashmir shawl that evolved from this expertise in its heyday had greater fame than any other Indian textile. Always a luxury commodity, the intricate, tapestry-woven, fine wool shawl had become a fashionable wrap for the ladies of the English and French elite by the 1700s. The supply fell short of demand and manufacturers pressed to produce more, created convincing embroidered versions of the woven shawls that could be produced in half the time. As early as 1803, Kashmiri needlework production was established to increase and hasten output of these shawls, which had been imitated in England since 1784 and even in France. By 1870, the advent of the Jacquard loom in Europe destroyed the exclusivity of the original Kashmir shawl, which began to be produced in Paisley, Scotland. Even the characteristic Kashmiri motif, the mango-shape, began to be known simply as the paisley.

The paisley motif is so ubiquitous to Indian fabrics that it challenges belief that it is only about 250 years old. It evolved from 1600's floral and tree-of-life designs that were created in expensive, tapestry-woven Mughal textiles. Early designs depicted single plants with large flowers and thin wavy stems, small leaves and roots. As the designs became denser, more flowers and leaves were compacted within the shape of the tree, or issuing from vases or a pair of leaves. By the late 1700s, the archetypal curved point at the top of an elliptical outline had evolved.

The elaborate paisley created on Kashmir shawls became the vogue in Europe for over a century, and imitations of these shawls were woven in factories at Paisley, Scotland, that gave it the name paisley still commonly used in the United States and Europe. In the late 1700s and 1800s, the paisley became an important motif in a wide range of Indian textiles, perhaps because it was associated with the Mughal court. It also caught the attention of poor and non-Muslim Indians because it resembled a mango. "Rural Indians called an aam or mango a symbol of fertility."

Hesquiat woman wrapped in a shawl.

The first shawls, or "shals", were used in Assyrian times; and later went into widespread use in the Middle East.  Shawls were also part of the traditional male costume in Kashmir, which was probably introduced via assimilation to Persian culture. They were woven in extremely fine woollen twill, some such as the Orenburg shawl, were even said to be as fine as the Shatoosh. They could be in one colour only, woven in different colours (called tilikar), ornately woven or embroidered (called ameli).
Kashmiri shawls were high-fashion garments in Western Europe in the early- to mid-1800s. Imitation Kashmiri shawls woven in Paisley, Renfrewshire are the origin of the name of the traditional paisley pattern. Shawls were also manufactured in the city of Norwich, Norfolk from the late 1700s (and some two decades before Paisley) until about the 1870s.

Silk shawls with fringes, made in China, were available by the first decade of the 1800s. Ones with embroidery and fringes were available in Europe and the Americas by 1820. These were called China crêpe shawls, China shawls, and in Spain mantones de Manila because they were shipped to Spain from China via the port of Manila. The importance of these shawls in fashionable women's wardrobes declined between 1865 and 1870 in Western culture. However, they became part of folk dress in a number of places including Germany, the Near East, various parts of Latin America, and Spain where they became a part of Romani (gitana) dress especially in Andalusia and Madrid. These embroidered items were revived in the 1920s under the name of Spanish shawls. Their use as part of the costume of the lead in the opera Carmen contributed to the association of the shawls with Spain rather than China.

shawls in early 19th century France