Judie Dench, Thandie Newton, Cameron Diaz and Richard Gere are some of their clients. Mubashir Andraabi, one of the brothers behind label Andraab insists the brothers have never intentionally taken photographs with their celebrity clientele or harped on them. “Despite their schedules, they write to us saying they are happy with our pashmina shawls and stoles,” he says with a smile, sorting out the bundles he’s shipped from Jaipur. Andraab is exhibiting its range of pashmina shawls, stoles and bedspreads at Gaurang’s flagship store, Jubilee Hills, today.
Andraab is backed by three brothers Muzaffar, Mubashir and Muzakir and has its presence in Jaipur, Udaipur and Delhi. Their specialisation is in hand-spun, hand-woven and hand-embroidered pashmina shawls made by master craftsmen in Kashmir. “We obtain the pashmina wool from goats in Chand Khand plateau in Ladakh. It doesn’t come cheap and out of a kilogram of wool we purchase, the yield is only 300 to 350gm,” he says. This pashmina differs vastly from the synthetic, watered-down versions that emerge from the Ludhiana-Amritsar belt. “Kashmir has a 600-year history of hand-woven pashmina shawls,” he says.
There are shawls and stoles in more than 50 shades of grey and beige with thin borders in Kashmiri sozni hand embroidery and others in pastels, fuchsia, olive greens, deep blues and vibrant reds. Some shawls have as their focal point a single, striking motif woven or embroidered, a few have sporadic motifs with plenty of vacant, breathing spaces for the design and then there are shawls completely covered in intricate, colourful embroidery.
Showing a red shawl with shoe stitch embroidery, he says, “The original of this design is at Louvre museum, Paris. We travel to museums to see what designs they stole from us and try to recreate them on the loom,” he laughs.
Pashmina bedspreads are tougher to weave and have a smaller clientele but Andraab dabbles in these too. A bedspread, for instance, has a scrolling vine pattern typical of Deccan paintings that Mubashir observed in the Victoria Albert Hall museum, London. “That particular wall piece is supposed to have belonged to Tipu Sultan,” says Mubashir. This recreated pashmina-silk bedspread costs a princely sum of Rs. 3 lakh. These are heirloom pieces.
Shawls with woven motifs take longer than embroidered ones as artisans labour over them on looms. “Shawls were originally woven into patterns. Embroidery came in later when the demand stepped up. Since Kashmir was in the Silk Route, craftsmen came and taught embroidery there,” he says. At Andraab, sometimes a loom is occupied for two or three years with a single piece to create a shawl with intricately woven motifs.
Jamawar paisley motifs in contemporary colours occupy a pride of place in their shawls. “Craftsmen tend to fill up the patterns with a lot of colours. When we initially told them how we wanted, with single or minimum colours, they felt there will be no buyers. Now they understand the difference,” he says. These artisans recreate motifs one finds in old paintings of Palampur, Mughal and Deccani eras, as well as contemporary motifs.
