Kashmir · Atelier
Kashmir,
woven by hand.
Each shawl is a single entry in a small atelier’s ledger — the hands, the village, the hours they spent.
Folio i · The piece on the loom
The Blue Indigo Jaal
Full-surface sozni on indigo pashmina · the flower net
Shameema's needle covered every inch of this indigo ground with a flowering jaal — the net of blossoms that is the signature of the finest sozni. The large central paisley is surrounded by fourteen distinct flowers, each in a different thread colour. It took eleven months of daylight work.
- Woven by
- Shameema Akhter
- At
- Eidgah, Srinagar
- Hours at the work
- 2,640 hrs
- Edition
- One of two from this season
₹4,85,000
Folio ii · By technique
Browse by craft
Folio iii · The voices
The hands behind the ledger.
Each piece carries the name of the person who made it. Here are some of them.
No. 01 · 41 yrs
Ghulam Rasool
Kanihama, Budgam
“The pattern is older than I am. I am only the most recent person to carry it forward.”
Read their story →
No. 02 · 26 yrs
Shameema Akhter
Eidgah, Srinagar
“If the light is wrong, the thread is wrong. So I wait.”
Read their story →
No. 03 · 33 yrs
Abdul Aziz
Tral, Pulwama
Read their story →
No. 04 · 19 yrs
Rukhsana Bano
Hawal, Srinagar
“Aari is a conversation between the hook and the cloth. I am only listening in.”
Read their story →
No. 05 · 38 yrs
Bashir Ahmad
Khanqah, Old Srinagar
Read their story →
No. 06 · 47 yrs
Haleema Begum
Bandipora
“The yarn knows the loom before the loom does.”
Read their story →
No. 07 · 24 yrs
Mohammad Yousuf
Nowshera, Srinagar
Read their story →
Folio iv · The way we work
Three things we will not do.
◈
No power looms.
Every thread in the ledger was placed by a human hand on a wooden loom. We do not sell or commission machine-made cloth, and never will.
◉
No anonymous labour.
Every piece carries the name of the artisan who finished it. The name is on the ledger entry and on a linen tag inside the shawl.
◻
No hurrying the work.
When a kani shawl needs two years, it gets two years. We have returned deposits rather than apologise for a delay.
About the loom
Slowly, by the same hand, from beginning to end.
A kani shawl can take a year on the loom. A jamawar, two. A sozni stole, a season of daylight. We do not hurry these. We do not make more than the artisans can finish. When a piece is ready, it goes into the ledger, and from there into your hands.
ہاتھ کا کام، ہاتھ ہی جانے
“Only the hand knows the hand’s work.”