Long shawl with woven figures and animals (c. 1885): Art, History and Details

Long shawl with woven figures and animals (c. 1885) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Kashmir shawls from India were status symbols in Europe during the 1800s, and few are as rare as this woven example. Over 200 human figures take part in drinking, smoking, dancing, and falconry in the Indian princely scenes that enliven the shawl’s borders and four dark stripes. The stripes alternate with large elongated boteh, or paisley, motifs that intertwine with blossoming stems in a European style adapted by Kashmiri textile artists. This extraordinary woven shawl was probably made to dazzle the jury at one of the European expositions of industrial products, as almost all other figural shawls were embroidered. It was woven in many pieces and then skillfully joined with colorful harlequin end borders.

Object facts

• Title: Long shawl with woven figures and animals
• Date: c. 1885
• Culture: India, Kashmir
• Type: Textile
• Technique: 2/2 twill tapestry weave, double interlocked and pieced: wool (possibly pashmina)
• Dimensions: Overall: 354.3 x 141.6 cm (139 1/2 x 55 3/4 in.)
• Collection: T - Islamic
• Department: Textiles
• Accession number: 2006.200

Collection credit

Gift of Arlene C. Cooper

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art. The CMA Companion: A Guide to the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2014.
• Mackie, Louise W. “Floral Delight: A new exhibition from the permanent collection showcases textiles from Islamic lands.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 54, no. 4 (July/August 2014): 11.
• Mackie, Louise W. Symbols of Power: Luxury Textiles from Islamic Lands, 7th-21st Century. Cleveland; New Haven: Cleveland Museum of Art; Yale University Press, 2015.

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.