Till the last century, few handicraft producers, or even traders, ever went out of the Valley, writes Renuka Savasere in one of the essays included in ‘A Tangled Web: Jammu & Kashmir’ edited by Ira Pande (Harper). “They did not need to; the whole world came here to buy their crafts. It is said that a Kashmiri had to sit by his window and the whole world passed by and that is how he was acquainted with what was happening across the globe…”
For instance, the essay informs that William Moorcroft, who travelled to Kashmir in 1819 AD, during the rule of Ranjit Singh to study the Kashmir shawl industry spoke of ninety articles including blankets, socks, jamas, caps, gowns made out of Pashmina apart from shawls, patkas, scarves, floor coverings and table covers. “Of the total population of 8,00,000, about 1,20,000 people were employed in this industry alone. However, this was after the Pashmina shawl had reached the shores of Europe to become an article of highest fashion there.”
A half century later, however, fortunes reversed. After France’s defeat in the 1870 war, with changes in fashion and cheaper imitations flooding the markets at one-tenth the cost of the original Kashmir shawl, Pashmina Kani weaving received a major setback and lost its markets in Europe and Russia, one learns. “Adding to these adverse external circumstances was also a disastrous famine that decimated the entire weaving community leaving just about 148 weavers in 1911. Most shawl weavers shifted to carpet weaving, and plain and embroidered Sozni shawls made for the Indian elite…”
Educative collection about an enchanting land.
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