KASHMIR AND SHAWLS
OF PAISLEY DESIGN
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(1)
Mother and Two Children by A E Chalon, c.
1812.
(courtesey of the Geffrye Museum) |
Shawls
of Paisley design were in fashion for nearly 100
years, from around 1780 until the 1870’s (1). During
this time millions were woven, embroidered and
printed in Kashmir, Persia, India, Russia, USA and
Europe, in France at Paris and Lyon, Austria in
Vienna, in England at Norwich and in Scotland at
Edinburgh, Glasgow and Paisley itself. It was the
woven Kashmir shawls which first caught women's
imagination, with European manufacturers quick to
emulate by weaving or printing. Paisley produced
shawls the most economically and for the longest
period, the name becoming synonymous with the place
of manufacture.
In order to write about
shawls of British manufacture I need first to
explain about the Kashmir shawl industry.
Kashmir
Shawls
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(2)
Woven Kashmir pashmina shawl, c. 1820
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(3) |
Shawls have been woven in Kashmir
since about the eleventh century, but the industry
producing what we refer to as a Kashmir shawl is
thought to have begun during the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries (2,3). During the fifteenth
century Persian replaced Sanskrit as the official
language and the world ‘shawl’ derives from the
Persian shal, denoting a class of woven fabric
rather than an article of dress. During its history
Kashmir experienced Mughal, Afghan and Sikh
invasions, all of which left their stylistic
influence on the shawl.
The Mughals, who inhabited the vast
Central Asian steppe, conquered Kashmir in 1586.
Under their rule the arts blossomed and the shawl
industry grew. Weavers were brought in from Eastern
Turkestan where the type of weave later used for
Kashmir shawls was practiced. Persian men had
traditionally worn narrow waist girdles of shawl
fabric, as part of male dress, while the Indians
wove wide shoulder mantles for male attire. These
were usually given as prestigious gifts, and one can
clearly see the honour in which they were held by
looking at miniatures of the period, where the proud
owner is seen wearing such an accessory. From about
1775 Kashmir shawls were acquired by travelers,
explorers, military personnel and members of the
East India Company who appreciating their beauty and
warmth, brought them back as presents. In Carola
Oman's life of Sir Walter Scott, The Wizard of the
North, it is recorded that Scott's French bride
Charlotte Carpentier was given a Kashmir shawl in
1797 for her trousseau which cost 50 guineas (£50/
$100), a huge sum.
 Motif Development
The earliest design on Kashmir
seventeenth and eighteenth century shawls was a
single flowering plant complete with roots, inspired
by English herbals (books with plant illustrations)
which reached the Mughal court during the
seventeenth century. This design gradually
developed into an upright spray of flowers, and by
around 1800 became the stylized cone-shaped motif
known as the boteh, which we now tend to call the
Paisley pine. The shape of the motif changed over
the decades, from a small squat cone to a very
elongated curve.
There
are many theories about the boteh or pine motif;
Paisley Museum's explanation seems perhaps the most
logical. The pattern can be traced back to ancient
Babylon, where a tear-drop shape was used as a
symbol to represent the growing shoot of a date
palm. The palm provided food, drink, clothing (woven
fibers) and
 shelter, and so became regarded as the
‘Tree of Life', with its growing shoot being
gradually recognized as a fertility symbol.
Production Methods
By the mid-nineteenth century demand
in Europe for Kashmir shawls was enormous and the
demand could not be satisfied. Before 1850 one man
would weave a shawl on a hand loom. After this date
several men or boys would weave a small section of a
shawl, which would be cut out and pieced together, a
patchwork of small pieces, and sewn into a shawl by
a shawl tailor or rafugar. An order worked in this
way could be completed in one-and-a-half months
instead of the two to three years it would take to
weave a shawl. Another even quicker method to
increase production was to embroider shawls, either
partially combining this technique with woven shawls
or completely embroidering.. Amazingly, with both
these methods joins cannot be detected and the
design flows over the whole shawl.
The
European manufacturers were not slow to realise the
potential of the shawl market, with Britain taking
the lead. Both Edinburgh in 1790 and Norwich in
1792, began to imitate Kashmir shawls on hand looms;
Paisley followed in 1805 (6). Paisley introduced an
attachment to the handloom in 1812, which enabled
five different colours of yarn to be used, instead
of just two colours, indigo and madder, thus better
imitating the Kashmir shawls. Agents were sent from
Paisley to London to copy the latest Kashmir shawls
as they arrived by sea and, in eight days imitations
were being sold in London for £12, the original
Kashmir shawl costing £70-100.
Differences Between Kashmir &
European Shawls
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(6) British hand
loom woven wool & silk stole, c. 1810 Notice
the similarity of design of this and below |
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(7)
Kashmir stole, 1830 |
The two basic differences between
Kashmir shawls and their imitators are the type of
cloth and the weaving method. The Kashmir shawls
being woven from hair, were lighter and smooth with
a natural sheen, whilst the European shawls, until
the end of the 1830's, were woven from silk or wool
which made them much heavier and less fine (6,7).
Methods
of weaving were quite different in Kashmir and
Europe. In Kashmir the shawls were woven in the
twill tapestry technique, which is similar to
weaving a European tapestry. The wefts (horizontals)
which form the pattern do not run right across the
fabric, but are woven back and forth around the warp
(vertical) threads, where each particular colour is
needed. Woven with goat's fleece, the finest softest
fleece, shah tus (king's wool) came from beneath the
coarse outer hair of the underbelly of wild central
Asian goats.
 These goats had such hair as a
protective layer against the extreme cold in the
high altitudes of the Himalayan region at 1,500 ft.
In spring, the goats would rub themselves against
the bushes from where it was collected. This quality
of fleece was used only for the most expensive
shawls. The majority being woven from pashmina,
hair from the underbelly of domesticated goats. The
best fleece was left the natural cream colour,
whilst the darker pashmina was dyed with natural
vegetable dyes.
The
early British shawls had warp (vertical) threads of
cotton or silk. These threads were strong and could
bear the strain of being lifted to introduce the
 pattern threads of the weft (horizontal) thread.
These could be of wool, cotton or silk. Wool was not
strong enough for use as a warp until the French
invented a yarn of wool fibres spun round a silk
core. This, together with the invention of the
Jacquard loom at the turn of the nineteenth century,
enabled more intricate patterns to be woven and
established the French as leaders in the field. The
first all-wool shawls were not made in Paisley until
1823.
Up
until the 1820’s when the Jacquard loom was
introduced into Paisley, weaving was a cottage
industry, with a weaver owning his own handlooms. He
lived typically in a single storey house with a
passage through the middle; on one side were his
living quarters, comprising one or two rooms plus a
loft, on the other side a weaving shop with up to
four looms.
 The
weaver, who was always a male, carried out almost
all the different processes involved in weaving a
shawl, often preparing the simple designs of the
early period and making the cards which defined the
pattern, as well as selling the shawls. Sometimes a
merchant financed the materials and provided
transport whilst an agent acted as middle man
between the two. With the introduction of the
drawloom, which required a drawboy to pull the ropes
controlling the overhead harness, the weaver would
call out his instructions. The shawl was woven with
the underside facing the weaver so if these
instructions were misconstrued, defects might not be
noticed until a few hours later.
The
finished shawls would be taken to the merchant who
only paid the weaver if he was satisfied with the
quality. The shawl would then be clipped to remove
the loose threads at the back, washed, stretched and
pressed to give a surface sheen. The Jacquard loom,
introduced to Paisley in the 1820’s, used punched
cards instead of a drawboy, eliminating human error
and reducing the workforce on a loom to one. These
looms, much larger and more expensive, changed a
cottage industry into a factory based one. Now there
was a division of labour and people were employed
for particular skills.
 Fashion Dictates
During the 100 years the shawl was in
fashion, its shape changed to suit the dresses with
which it was worn. From 1770-1810 simple high-waisted
white muslin dresses were fashionable. With
these neo-Classical dresses, simple long light
stoles with narrow borders and deeper woven ends or
small one-yard squares shawls with narrow borders
folded into a triangle were worn. The centres were
either plain or had a small repeating sprig or pip
design. The ends and narrow borders were separately
woven, often having small meandering flowers or pine
motifs, using just three or four colours. Such a
shawl would have cost around £20.
The
1820's saw great changes to the industry with the
Jacquard loom being introduced into Paisley. Now
shawls could be woven in one piece with bolder
designs and more colours. Dresses were of silk,
still with high waists but with
 bodice detailing
such as pintucks and wide puff sleeves, requiring a
larger shawl. During the 1830's the skirt got
larger, balanced by huge sleeves, until by 1840
several starched white petticoats or a horsehair
petticoat was worn, replaced in 1856 by whalebone
hoops or the crinoline frame (10).
It was
at this time of the widening skirts that the shawl
really became popular, with at least one being
included in every better class trousseau. In
Scotland they were known as 'kirking' (church)
shawls when they were worn to church on the first
Sunday after the wedding and then used again at
christenings.
Paisley
had become pre-eminent in Great Britain by reducing
costs through sub–division and specialization of
labour. They appealed to the mass market of the
middle and eventually working classes. By 1850,
Edinburgh could no longer compete with Paisley and
stopped producing shawls. Norwich and France
continued to produce very good quality examples.
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(11) Typical
Paisley worn with crinoline skirt, when it
was at its widest. c. 1865 |
It was
difficult to wear a coat with a crinoline frame
(wire underskirt) although short mantles and capes
were worn. Most people preferred a warm enveloping
shawl, with a stunning design (11). From 1840-75
shawls were made much larger to cover the skirt: 5
feet (1.50 m) square; 5 feet (1.50m) by 8 feet 4
inches (2.50m); 5 feet (1.50 m) by 10/12 (3/3.60m)
feet. Square shawls were folded in triangles with a
top flap just slightly turned over, whilst the large
rectangles could be folded into two and caught at
the front with a brooch and the full splendour of
the shawl splayed out over the crinoline (12).
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(13) Paisley
woven wool and silk shawl with a typical
allover design, c 1860 |
Paisley
called these large shawls 'filled harness' plaids or
shawls (13). By 1860, a large shawl could cost about
17s.6d to (46s old money), or 87p to £1.35, took 18
days to weave and could have up to 15 colours,
whilst a Kashmir shawl could have four times as many
colours. The Paisley would weigh 50 oz whilst the
Kashmir, of slightly smaller size weighed 5 -9 oz,
making the Kashmir shawl greatly popular with those
who could afford them. By 1865 a reversible shawl
was invented at Paisley which was of double
thickness with all the loose unclipped threads
sandwiched between the two layers, resulting in a
heavy and unpopular shawl.
Norwich, Paisley, Glasgow and other towns printed
shawls which were immensely popular. Beautiful
flimsy silk gauze examples, with bright clear
colours were printed for evening wear for the middle
and upper classes (14). Heavier shawls of wool and
silk with light coloured centres were used for
summer wear and dark centres for winter. Printers
copied the designs of the woven examples, using
wooden blocks and later blocks with the pattern
lines inlaid with metal (15).
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(14) Hand block
printed silk gauze shawl, c. 1850 |
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(15) Hand block
printed silk shawl, c. 1850 |
The blocks could of
course be interchanged to produce an infinite number
of designs. Later, roller-printed shawls were
produced. Millions of shawls were printed for the
mass market, mainly on wool and cotton or wool and
silk grounds. These were usually extremely
attractive, with clear vibrant or soft pretty colours.
A
combination of events led to the decline of
popularity of the shawl in the early 1870's. The
Franco-Prussian war of 1870-1871 halted exports of
shawls from Kashmir to France, resulting in the
collapse of the industry. A shawl could not fall
very successfully down the back with the bustle,
that rear wired protrusion, which became so
fashionable at the time. But probably the most
defining factor was that by 1870 a woven Jacquard
shawl could be brought for 20 s or £1 and an
identical patterned cotton shawl for a few
shillings. Once shawls had become so inexpensive
that every woman could afford to own at least one,
they fell out of fashion. Many were cut to make into
stunning mantles which could be worn with the bustle
dress.
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(12)
Three ways to wear a shawl 1860s. |
Further Reading:
Irwin, John The Kashmir Shawl.
Victoria and Albert Museum, 1973. ISBN 0112901646
Frank Ames The Kashmir Shawl. Antique
Collectors Club, UK 1986 but recently reprinted.
ISBN 0907462626
Clabburn, Pamela. The Norwich Shawl. HMSO,
U.K. 1996. ISBN 0117015849
Clabburn, Pamela Shawls, Shire Books,
re-published 2005. (www.shirebooks.co.uk)
Reilly, Valerie The Paisley Pattern The Official
Illustrated History. 1987. Richard Drew,
Glasgow ISBN 086267
Levi-Strauss, Monique The French Shawls.
1987 Dryad Press Ltd 1987. ISBN 0852197594
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