During the reign of Queen Victoria, it was customary for her to present a Kashmiri Shawl as a wedding present to a bride, if her people were connected with the court.
Pashmina Shawls: The raw material Pashmina, from where this shawl derives its name is obtained from ‘Pashm’ goat found in trans- Himalayan areas of Ladakh and Tibet.
”When Amir-i-Kabir (Mir Syed Ali Hamadani) came to Kashmir from Ladakh, he brought Pashm with him and after arriving here, he got the processing of ‘Pashm’ done and from then on,various varieties of Pashmina work began. .He prepared a pair of socks with his own hands from Pashmina and gifted it to Sultan Qutub Dinpur Shahmir.
This was the starting point of the usage of Pashmina in various textiles in Kashmir and this industry gained hold in the Valley.
The raw material Pashmina is spun on a spinning wheel known as ‘Yander’ in Kashmiri.
This Pashmina is spun into fine threads and then sold to a shop-keeper known as “Pham-Doos” in Kashmir who pays according to the finesse of the thread spun, and women also get new raw material from the same shop in most of cases. Then these threads are sent to looms in which these threads are drawn into sheets .In case of Pashmina shawls, looms are driven physically or handmade. After this process, the sheets are sent to a skilled labourer known as “Purzgar” in Kashmiri for removing the roughness. .Then it is sent to laundry for cleaning and washing and is ready to be worn if one desires to wear it plain.
Then it is dyed in various colours accordingly. Again it is sent to the laundry to neutralise the alkalinity or acidity that is developed due to the dyeing process.Then it can also be sent for embroidery. The first step in the process of embroidery is to send the shawl for impressions. It is embossed in the blocks of the impressions based on the design. After this process, the shawl is sent for embroidery which is mostly done in the villages .Then at last, again the shawl is sent to laundry to cleanse it.
The secret behind the frequent cleansing of Pashmina shawl is that the quality of Pashmina shawl is not revealed by its softness, but by its shine. .So the more you cleanse the shawl, the more shining and charming it appears. The cost for plain Pashmina shawl ranges between Rs.3000 to Rs5000. If the shawl has embroidery, the cost may range beyond Rs.7,500 depending on the pattern.
How Kashmiri Shawls reached the West
According to an account, as early as 1519 A.C: “The Kashmiri fabrics, even of the finer kind, must have been known in the West of Europe as may be inferred from the tradition, that the light veil fastened by a thin golden thread over the forehead, covering the back of the head and falling on the shoulders, of Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous portrait of Mona Lisa, wife of Francesco of Giaconda, a citizen of Florence, was in reality one of those earlier Kashmir fabrics that could be drawn through a lady’s ring as a test of its fineness.”
Empress Josephine of France, who was once the paragon of female fashion, had a wardrobe filled with rare Kashmiri Kanni shawls. Napoleon always wanted to get her the most exceptional shawls. It was not before 1796, that the Shawl was sent to Europe by the Afghan rulers of Kashmir through King Nadir Shah, who sent it to the ruler of Constantinople. Empress Josephine, mesmerized by Kashmiri Shawls, set a new trend among women not only in Paris, but in England too.
According to another account, Abdullah Khan, the Afghan governor of Kashmir, met a blind man, named Sayyid Yahya, who had come from Baghdad as a visitor to Kashmir. When he took leave from Abdullah Khan to return, the latter gave him a present of an orange-coloured shawl. Sayyid is stated to have presented the shawl to Khedive in Egypt who, in his turn, presented it to Napoleon Bonaparte, then engaged in the Egyptian campaign. Napoleon passed it on to the future Empress Josephine.
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April 2008 |
