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Collections

Woman's Shawlcirca 1800

Not on view
Horizontal rectangular textile with a butter-yellow woven field, bordered at each short end by vertical panels of repeating burgundy oval motifs and cream fringe
Textile fragment with yellow ground, densely packed rows of boteh (paisley) motifs in pink, dark green, and red, bordered by narrow geometric bands at top and bottom.
Textile fragment with yellow ground, densely woven with rows of boteh motifs in red, dark green, and blue, each containing floral sprigs; corner turned back to reveal reverse side; narrow patterned border along two edges.
Woven textile with a yellow ground, featuring a repeating pattern of large oval medallions in red and dark green, each enclosing a central floral stem motif in red, blue, and gold, with small floral sprigs filling the spaces between medallions.
Title
Woman's Shawl
Place Made
India, Kashmir, for the Western market
Date Made
circa 1800
Medium
Goat-fleece underdown (cashmere wool) interlocking twill tapestry weave
Dimensions
126 x 53 in. (320 x 134.6 cm)
Credit Line
From the Nasli and Alice Heeramaneck Collection, Museum Associates Purchase
Accession Number
M.71.1.39
Classification
Costumes
Collecting Area
Costume and Textiles
Curatorial Notes

Long shawls produced in Kashmir, India, of the finest goat-fleece underdown became fashionable accessories worn with the diaphanous Neoclassical dresses of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Woven in twill, these shawls often had decorative borders of stylized flowers or shrubs with bending tips (buta). Twill is a weave structure in which one set of warps and wefts passes over two or more elements and under one or more elements of the opposing set to form floats in a diagonal alignment.

Selected Bibliography
  • Rosenfield, John. The Arts of India and Nepal: The Nasli and Alice Heeramaneck Collection. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1966.
  • Takeda, Sharon Sadako and Kaye Durland Spilker. Fashioning Fashion: Deux Siècles de Mode Européenne, 1700-1915. Paris: Arts Décoratifs; Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Munich; New York: Delmonico Books-Prestel, 2013.
  • Takeda, Sharon Sadako and Kaye Durland Spilker. Fashioning Fashion: European Dress in Detail, 1700-1915. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Munich; New York: Delmonico Books/Prestel, 2010.
  • Takeda, Sharon Sadako and Kaye Durland Spilker. Fashioning Fashion: Europäische Moden, 1700-1915. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Munich; New York: Prestel, 2012.
  • Örmen, Catherine. L'Art de la Mode. Paris: Citadelles & Mazenod, 2015.

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