Border of a Shawl (c. 1825–30): Art, History and Details

Border of a Shawl (c. 1825–30) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Kashmiri shawls were extremely popular in the early 1800s, especially among foreigners to the Indian subcontinent. Made in the mountainous region of northwest India from wool from mountain goats from nearby Ladakh, the fabrics were especially prized for their softness and their beautiful symmetrical designs, often called paisley in English. This textile fragment was once owned by Ananda Coomaraswamy (1877–1947), a Ceylonese (Sri Lankan) art historian and collector who is credited with introducing South Asian art to museums in the United States.

Object facts

• Title: Border of a Shawl
• Date: c. 1825–30
• Culture: India, Kashmir
• Type: Textile
• Technique: wool: tapestry twill
• Dimensions: Overall: 37.1 x 48.9 cm (14 5/8 x 19 1/4 in.); Mounted: 54.9 x 66.7 cm (21 5/8 x 26 1/4 in.)
• Collection: Textiles
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 1925.500

A detail from the museum

The top of the teardrop design recalls fanned-out peacock feathers.

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Ames, Frank. The Kashmir Shawl and Its Indo-French Influence. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Antique Collectors' Club, 1997.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.