Plain Kashmiri Tusha Shawl

This shawl with usual dimensions : 6.8 ft length, and 3.5 ft breadth, woven of fine wool, named Tusha, perhaps for its tush or Shahtush like softness and rich look, wool’s thickness about sixty counts, and microns, about thirty-five, is a product of the hands of skilled Kashmiri weavers. It is completely hand-woven and the purity of the fibre is meticulously maintained. Soft as a new-born babe, it discovers all its beauty and excellence in its feather-touch like feel. Though not an expensive class of wool, and hence neither its product, it abounds in a Pashmina shawl-like aura and grace. A plain piece or adorned with embroidered patterns the beauty of a Tusha shawl is simply superb.

The Tusha wool is endowed with a strange ability to attribute to any colour immense depth and richness; hence, any colour is a Tusha shawl’s colour, though a deeper tint better befits the kind of wool a Tusha shawl is woven from, and in that it acquires a rich lustre and the most gorgeous look. Broadly, when plain a Tusha shawl’s beauty better reveals in deeper tint, whichever the colour, and when embroidered, the embroidered patterns shall better reveal against a lighter tint. Among plain Tusha shawls one with deeper tint has delightful contrast against the glowing fair complexion of a youthful maiden; and contrarily, a lighter tint is a senior damsel’s grace. Unsurpassed in beauty and elegance an embroidered Tusha shawl befits every age and every colour base.

This description by Prof. P.C. Jain and Dr Daljeet. Prof. Jain specializes on the aesthetics of ancient India. 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.