Pashmina Shawl with Intricate Sozni Embroidery

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This shawl, a pure Pashmina wool piece, dyed in maroon– a colour endowed with exceptional depth to suit every age-group, every kind of occasion and every taste, in its material quality as soft as a newborn babe, abounds in rare lustre, grace and magnificence. Even a plain – dyed or undyed, Pashmina length, the softest fibre that nature has ever produced, is a prestigious collection – not so much cost-wise as for its rarity, a piece intricately embroidered by skilled hands of Kashmiri artisans, in its entirety, revealing the land’s flavour and the beauty of a great art piece, as is this shawl, has worth almost incalculable. Rare as it is, Pashmina fabrics are made of the inner-most layer of fleece, as fine as not exceeding in thickness a diameter of 14 to 16 microns, almost one-sixth of the average thickness of human hair measuring around 90 to 100 microns, culled barely once a year around the Spring strictly from under-neck and under-belly parts of a particular breed of goat known as capra hircus found in Himalayan hill region on an altitude varying in between 4300 to 4500 meters. The average annual yield of Pashmina wool from one goat being hardly 80 to 90 grams, Pashmina’s total annual production does not exceed a few kilograms.

Rarity of material apart, the embroidery – fine intricate needle-work used for embellishing its entire field along a border on all four sides, rendered using coloured silk for creating a wide range of design-patterns, mainly ‘bels’ – vines with various styles of flowers crowning them, makes the piece far more beautiful and invaluable. This style of embroidery – the pure hand work rendered with needle using freely various styles of stitches : chain-stitch, running stitch, surface darning stitch … , is known as ‘sozni’. A Persian word ‘sozni’ consists of two terms: ‘sozn’, meaning ‘needle’, and ‘ni’, a suffix meaning ‘of’ or ‘by’, that is, ‘sozni’ means the work ‘of needle’, broadly, any sort of needle-work or hand-embroidery; however, not merely needle-work, in textile traditions now for long ‘sozni’ has stood for the finest and the most delicate kind of needle-work, a free-style needle-embroidery which nothing, except its rare fineness and visual appeal, conditions.

Sozni might use any kind of stitches from among their wide range, and except decorative forms that nature directly affords it hardly ever uses a theme : legends, narratives, portraits – human or animal figures, isolated or serialized events … or even a motif having sectarian links. Other styles, such as ‘kantha’, also use fine needle-work but not so much the merit of embroidery in them their focal points are sometimes their theme, as in kantha, sometime the material that they use, as in zardozi, mirror-embroidery, patch-work, beads-embroidery … and sometimes a specific kind of stitch or technique, as in cross-stitch embroidery. Themes, narratives, portraits … and even many of the rigidified motifs belong and hence confine to lands, races or sects, or to racial or sectarian beliefs; ‘sozni’ is universal and essentially secular; it has its appeal in its rare aesthetic beauty, in itself, not in any far off context.

As is usual in almost all embroidered, or even woven, Kashmiri shawls, this piece also has plain ends, each about seven inches wide, on both sides of its length. The rest of its space has been covered by fine sozni embroidery consisting of three design-patterns : a border on all four sides, edge to edge on lengths, affording a frame to the entire needle-work, Paisley bands crowning the two outer arms of the border on breadths giving the two ends the distinction of pallas, and the field : the larger space contained within the framing border. The border consists of a floral creeper comprising three styles of flowers, a multi-petalled larger one, another, a seven-petalled, one of a medium size, and yet another, a tiny three-petalled form tugged along leaves on the linear courses that on one hand represent the creeper’s stems, and on the other, the frame around the two flowers. Though differently styled, the Paisley band consists, besides the Paisley motifs, of the same flower-forms as in the border. The field has been adorned with bels with linear branches and a wide range of flower-forms and tiny leaves, some of them running across the entire length.

This description by Prof. P.C. Jain and Dr Daljeet. Prof. Jain specializes on the aesthetics of ancient Indian literature. Dr Daljeet is the chief curator of the Visual Arts Gallery at the National Museum of India, New Delhi. They have both collaborated on numerous books on Indian art and culture.

Primary Color Pantone 19-1235 -TPX Brunette