M.2024.184.8
Shawl (Palledar)
India, Jammu and Kashmir, Kashmir region for the European market
18501870s
Goat-fleece underdown twill double-interlocking tapestry-weave, pieced, with wool embroidery
58 1/2 x 127 in.
This rectangular shawl, called a palledar, is composed of multiple pieces of twill tapestry-woven cloth adeptly stitched together to form an intricate, sweeping design. Its long length—more than 10½ feet—was designed to be worn over the large crinoline skirts and hourglass silhouettes of fashionable European women. The shawl’s extended and abstracted butas sinuously loop upon themselves, stretching from the corners of the palledar toward the central multicolored disk. Dense foliate scrolling fills the spaces in between with smaller interlacing butas and branching flowering vines, as well as a broad band of pointed arches that illustrates an Indo-Islamic influence in this textile made for the European market.
The insatiable Western demand for Kashmir shawls, beginning in the late eighteenth century, fueled a design dialogue between Kashmiri weavers and European consumers, whose aesthetic preferences led to more dense and complex designs. Eventually, new European designs were given to weavers in Kashmir to produce for the Western market.
To meet export demand, the Kashmir industry used a piecework process in which various parts of a shawl were made simultaneously by several weavers. The pieces were then assembled by a rafugar (needleworker), who joined the unfinished edges through reweaving, darning, or embroidery. The finished textile was expensive, incorporating the cost of both labor and the fine pashm (cashmere) fibers used to weave it. Pashm came from the underdown of Capra hircus (goats) that roamed the Himalayas hundreds of miles from Kashmir. The imported fibers were processed, spun, and woven into shawls decorated with buta and floral motifs, achieved with tapestry weave on a standard horizontal loom. Unlike any other tapestry-woven fabric in the world, Kashmir shawls were made with a two-by-two twill weave throughout, with wefts double-interlocking at the transition between each colored thread to prevent slit openings. Known locally as kani, this technique resulted in textiles with the astounding clarity of design and cohesiveness in the drape of the fabric unique to Kashmir shawls.
Clarissa M. Esguerra
2024