Kashmir shawl, unknown maker from India or Pakistan

Exhibition Label:
“Flowers, Dragons and Pine Trees: Asian Textiles in the Spencer Museum of Art,” Nov-2005, Mary Dusenbury
In the second and third quarters of the nineteenth century, the patterned borders of Kashmir shawls expanded into the central field, finally reducing it to a small medallion in the 1860s. The buta, or cone motif, became increasingly elongated, enhancing the fashionable silhouettes of Parisian women. Used as an element of abstract design, the motif changed orientations and size within a single shawl, intertwined with adjoining cones, and visually moved in and out of an elaborate field. On later shawls, as here, the emphasis shifts from the quality of the fiber to the design.