The Collection

The story of this piece

Shameema's most ambitious piece. A Mughal court in full — arched architecture, the emperor on the throne, courtiers, horses, and a garden that surrounds everything. Twenty-eight thread colours, eighteen months, two students, and Shameema finishing all the faces herself.

A note on the hand. Shameema works sozni — the finest needlework Kashmir produces. She prefers walnut-dyed thread and works only in daylight, beside a window that faces east. Her father was a copyist of Quranic manuscripts; she says she inherited the steady hand, not the calligraphy.