Journey of a motif

Jasvinder Kaur

On a cold winter wedding in North India, one always comes across elegant ladies wearing jamavar or kani shawls with their kundan necklaces and dangling jhumkaas.

The designer of one such wedding proudly tells the mother how he has successfully copied the paisley design and matched the shawl not only on to the bride’s dress but also in small sizes on the bridegroom’s achkan. He proudly tells others that the theme of the wedding is paisley. There will be paisley everywhere — in décor, clothes and jewellery. His ideas evoke wows. To the family it seems an Anglicised theme and topic. But is it really? One wonders as to what exactly is this paisley? Is it a motif or a design? A Scottish town? Or a design from the old shawls? Or very simply an Indian mango or an ambi that one sees everywhere — from Punjabi juttis to handmade paper, from designer suits to kani shawls and traditional Banarasi or kanjivaram saris. The answer is it has a bit of everything in its evolution and history, this motif associated with the Kashmiri shawl.

The many names

To a layman, a Kashmiri shawl can be anything from an antique long shawl to one with a typical motif — buta, ambi, mango or paisley, whatever one may call it. They all mean the same thing. How did a humble ambi then become a paisley?

The name boteh or buta is of Persian origin and it has taken many centuries for it to develop into the shape that it is today. The original Persian buta is thought to have been representation of a floral spray combined with Cyprus tree, a Zoroastrian symbol of life and eternity. It is a popular motif in Iran and South and Central Asian countries. Early historic references to shawls are found during Akbar’s reign (1556-1605 AD). Although the Ain-i-Akbari mentions the emperor as being a keen admirer of shawls, there is no mention of any types of motifs or styles.

The shawls from the Mughal period had motifs at their ends, the form of which changed over the centuries. John Irwin traces the development of the buta from the Mughal period to the British period. In the late 17th century, the motif that appeared on the shawl was a slender and curved flowering plant deriving inspiration from the floral art of Persia. By the early 18th century, from being a slimmer and graceful motif, it had become one filled with flowers. This was known as buta. It was not until the middle of 18th century that the outline of the motif began to acquire a more rigid form that was referred to as the cone or the pine in the West. Half a century later, it lost its naturalistic floral design and became a formal cone with a bent edge on top. It had acquired the shape that we recognise today as ambi or mango or buta or paisley. By the time Kashmiri shawls came to the West, this pattern had become synonymous with them.

Its various avatars

Ambi or buta has been a favourite with Indian designers, the motif often making it to the wedding trousseau. It is a regular feature in ace designer Sabyasachi Mukherjee’s designs.

East to West, the first flight

The journey of Kashmiri shawls from the Asian continent to Europe has been an interesting one. They were exported to Iran, Constantinople, Cairo, Russia, Yemen and Oman. This was another route via which the shawls reached Europe initially. The story goes that when Napoleon Bonaparte’s army returned from Egypt, some of his men had Kashmiri shawls with them. Empress Josephine saw them and was enamoured with them and acquired several pieces to build a large collection. That generated interest amongst the nobility and was a big factor in popularising Kashmiri shawls in France.

The shawls from Kashmir were first worn in the fashionable circles in the West in the third quarter of the 18th century and by 1800, the shawl trade between Kashmir and the West was being established.

Maharaja Ranjit Singh, who had ruled over Kashmir from 1819 to 1839, had a large number of Europeans working in his army. The presence of many Europeans in the region was a key factor behind the success of the shawl trade with the West. Two key figures were from Napoleon’s army — Generals Jean-Francois Allard and Jean-Batiste Ventura who has been working with Ranjit Singh since 1822. By 1835, both of them were exporting shawls to France.

With the arrival of the Kashmiri shawl in the 18th and 19th century, the buta pattern came into prominence in Europe. The motif that one associates with the shawl took the continent by storm. The shawl became a favoured item in every fashionable lady’s wardrobe in Europe. Many European portraits of women where the artist has captured the shawls with their intricate patterns form an important source of studying the developments of the shawl patterns.

Production pangs

Weaving of kani shawls in early 19th century in Kashmir had become so complicated and laborious that it took up to18 months to weave a piece. At the same time, the demand for these shawls in Europe was so high that India could not cope with it. That led the European industry to copy the Kashmiri shawls in a very short time.

Britain and France were keen to develop their own shawl industry rather than dealing with the agents. Britain was ahead of France in attempting to replicate the Kashmiri shawls. Norwich and Edinburgh, the pioneering centres, had been attempting to make Kashmir like shawls since 1780s using silk warp and woollen weft.

However, the first centre that was successful in making close copies of the Kashmiri designs was the Scottish town of Paisley. By 1812, Paisley weavers had successfully made a device called ten-box-lay’s that allowed five shuttles to be held in the loom simultaneously and thus five different colours could be woven giving multi coloured patterns.

Quick copies

In order to keep up with the design changes, Paisley weavers sent agents to London to copy the designs of the shawls once they arrived from India. These were at once dispatched to Paisley where they were quickly copied. And within eight days, the imitations were sold in London. The Paisleys were priced at 12 pounds while the originals from India could be as expensive as 300 pounds. So successful were the Paisley manufacturers that they even tried to export shawls to India, but without much success.

From this point onwards, the English term for buta was paisley. Though British pioneered manufacture of shawls in Europe, they were overtaken by France which developed the Jacquard loom in the third quarter of 19th century. Many centres like Lyon, Vienna, Switzerland, and Paris mushroomed in Europe. Generically the European shawls are also referred to as Paisleys. Paisley has stayed as a popular motif in many continents over many centuries. In modern times, The Beatles in their Eastern-influenced phase went completely ‘paisley mad’. John Lennon’s Rolls Royce had paisley painted on it. Paisley then became a rock ’n’ roll favorite and was popular in the 1960s and 1970s. Designers like Saint Laurent, Burberry, Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana, and Yves Saint Laurent have incorporated paisley in their designs.

Paisley or ambi or the buta has stayed as a decorative motif for many centuries evolving to forms that fit into the fashions of the times. From India to Europe and America, it remains a popular motif reinventing itself to the demands of fashion and style.