In English, the common droplet-shaped motif found on Kashmir shawls is named after the Scottish town Paisley, which became famous for its imitation shawls in the first half of the 19th century. Locally, it is called boteh  (Persian: بوته ; meaning “shrub”) or buta in the Indian subcontinent. Elsewhere on Object of the Day, Deputy Curatorial Director and Head of Textiles...

This distinctive, fully reversible shawl border was handwoven in Russia in the early nineteenth century to be part of a Kashmir-style shawl. It was woven such that the intricate floral design is identical on both sides of the fabric. Kashmir shawls were essential fashion accessories for stylish women of means in nineteenth-century Europe. Initially imported...

When Napoleon presented Josephine with a shawl that had been given to him on his Egyptian campaign (1798–1801), he started a fashion craze that lasted half a century and had major economic impacts on several nations. Fashionable ladies wearing the extremely lightweight Neoclassical gowns of the period went wild for the soft, beautiful and very...