CASHMERE - THE EARLY HISTORY
Cashmere fibre is obtained from the Cashmere goat. The name derives from an archaic spelling of Kashmir. Just as champagne is frequently used to describe any sparkling wine, the word 'cashmere' is sometimes incorrectly applied to any extremely soft wool. Cashmere wood is a scent note in perfumes, there are towns called Cashmere in the United States and New Zealand.
Source of the fibre The Cashmere (Kashmir) or goat down is the source of the wool that becomes cashmere fiber for clothing and other textile articles. The goat (Capra hircus Laniger) belongs to the subfamily Caprinae of the family Bovidae. The goats produce a double fleece consisting of the fine, soft undercoat or underdown of hair commingled with a straighter and much coarser outer coating of hair called guard hair. In order for the fine under down to be sold and processed further, it must first be de-haired. De-hairing is a mechanical process that separates the coarse hairs from the fine hair and after de-hairing the resulting "cashmere" is ready to be dyed to color and converted into yarn, fabrics and garments.
Geographic origin Cashmere goats live predominantly in the high plateaus of Asia with the largest populations being found in the northwestern provinces of China (Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Gansu, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Qinghai and Tibet), Mongolia, Iran (Kerman and Khorasan provinces) and Pakistan, India, and even parts of Afghanistan. Today, little is supplied by the Kashmir State of India, from which its name is derived. The cashmere products of this area first attracted the attention of Europeans in the early 1800s.
Cashmere, from ancient Rome to Mughal India In bygone times Kashmir was also spelled cachemire, cachmere or cashmere. It is the latter spelling which has become the accepted variant in English, while cachemire is the modern French spelling. Cashmere was known to the Romans who had trading contacts with India and central Asia, but after the fall of the Roman Empire, knowledge of cashmere was lost in the west until about three and a half centuries ago.
Cashmere shawls were being woven in Kashmir in the eleventh century, the earliest written account of pashmina shawls comes from the Rajatarangiru of Srivara, a 15th-century Kashmiri text that discusses woolen fabric with fine woven designs, but the industry producing what we today refer to as a Kashmir or cashmere shawl had its origins in the fifteenth century when weaving of tapestry shawls was first introduced into the valley from Turkistan, by Zain-ul-Abdin, the ruler of Kashmir.
Also during the fifteenth century, following the Mughal conquest of India, Persian replaced Sanskrit as the official language of the empire. Our 'shawl' derives from the Persian 'shaal', which originally denoted a class of woven fabric rather than an article of dress. The Mughals arrive in Kashmir During its history Kashmir had Mughal, Afghan and Sikh invasions, all of which left their influence stylistically on the shawls.
The Mughals were originally from the quintessential home of cashmere, Mongolia. (Mughal is a variation of Mongol) They conquered Kashmir in 1586. Under their rule the arts blossomed and shawl makers flourished. Weavers were brought in from Eastern Turkestan where the type of weave later used for Kashmir shawls was practised. The Ain-i Akbari, an account from the Mughal period in Kashmir (1586-1752) states that the Emperor Akbar was a keen collector of kani shawls.
Before the Mughal period Persian men had been weaving narrow waist girdles of shawl fabric, as part of male dress, and the Indians, wide shoulder mantles. These were usually given as prestigious gifts and one can clearly see the honour in which they were held by looking at miniatures of the period where the proud owner is seen wearing such a garment.
The European discovery of Kashmir, François Bernier French interest in Kashmir, or cachemire, began in the mid seventeenth century with François Bernier, a friend of Moliere and Cyrano de Bergerac. Bernier was the first European of the modern era to see and describe the traditional cashmere shawl. Bernier came of farming stock, but studied medicine. In 1652 during a prolonged stay with Gassendi in the south of France, he managed to become a medical doctor on the strength of a speed-course at the famous Faculté de Montpellier: an intensive three-month course gave the medical degree providing one did not practice on French national territory.
Obliged to practice his medical skills outside France, Bernier set out in 1655 out on a twelve-year journey to the East, at 36 years of age: Palestine, Egypt, one year in Cairo, Arabia, Ethiopia. In 1658 he landed at Surat in India. Attached at first and for a short while to the retinue of Dara Shikoh - the history of whose downfall he was to record - he was installed as a medical doctor at the court of Aurangzeb, the last of the great Mughal emperors, and served as his personal physician for nine years.
Aurangzeb's court in Delhi was a place of fabulous beauty and wealth. Here is a description of the diwan-e-aam, or audience hall, and the women's quarters of the palace. The roof is supported by nine rows of graceful columns cut from red sandstone and formerly covered with gold. The rest of the building is marble. The throne stood upon a high platform in an alcove of white marble, richly decorated, and above it are balconies protected by grilles or screens behind which the sultanas were permitted to watch the proceedings. Behind the audience-room is a great quadrangle, planted with trees, flowers and vines. White marble walks radiate from a marble platform and fountain basin in the center, and divide the garden into beds which, we are told, were filled with soil brought from Cashmere because of its richness. And even to-day gardeners say that it is more productive than any found in this part of the country.
Around this court were the apartments of the zenana, or harem, occupied by the mother, sisters, wives and daughters of the sultan who were more or less prisoners, but had considerable area to wander about in, and could sit in the jasmine tower, one of the most exquisite pieces of marble work you can imagine, and on the flat roofs of the palaces, which were protected by high screens, and enjoy views over the surrounding country and up and down the Jumna River. The baths are of the most sumptuous character. The walls are decorated with raised foliage work in colors, silver and gold, upon a ground of mirrors, and the ceiling is finished with pounded mica, which has the effect of silver.
Fronting the entrance of the bathrooms are rows of lights over which the water poured in broad sheets into a basin, then, running over a little marble causeway, fell over a second cluster of lights into another basin, and then another and another, five in succession, so that many ladies were able to bathe in these fascinating fountains at the same time.
The women in the harem may have been prisoners but were provided with every luxury including fine cashmere pashmina shawls. These were woven in the northern province of Kashmir, which at that time, few Europeans had visited.
In his capacity as royal doctor, Bernier accompanied Aurangzeb on an official visit to Kashmir. He recorded his experiences and described Kashmir in the first, and for a long time the only, book on the subject. Bernier provided some of the first, tantalising descriptions of the designs and the soft, delicate texture of pashmina shawls. They were woven in the twill tapestry technique, which is similar to weaving a tapestry.
The wefts (horizontals) which form the pattern do not run right across the fabric, but are woven back and forth around the warp (vertical) threads only where each particular colour is needed. They were woven with goat's fleece; the finest softest fleece, shah tus (king's wool) came from beneath the coarse outer hair of the underbelly of the wild central Asian goats. These goats grew such hair as a protective layer against the extreme cold in high altitudes, 14,750 ft in the Himalayan region.
In Spring, the goats rub themselves against the bushes where it was collected. This quality of fleece was used only for the very best shawls, the majority being from domesticated goats called pashmina. The best fleece was left its natural white colour whilst the darker was dyed with vegetable dyes. Shawls made of coarser cashmere 'guard hair' were commonly worn in India, with the finest quality being reserved for the nobles.
Bernier was in Delhi when Aurangzeb's rebellious son, Prince Darah-Shikoh, was captured and brought back to the city. Even here the cashmere shawl makes an appearance, but it is of an inferior sort and is used to make a telling point. The wretched prisoner was secured on an elephant; his young son, Sipah Shikoh, placed at his side, and behind them, instead of the executioner, was seated Bahadur Khan [one of the royal generals].
This was not one of the majestic elephants of Pegu or Ceylon, which Dara had been in the habit of mounting, pompously caparisoned, the harness gilt, and trappings decorated with figured work; and carrying a beautifully painted howdah inlaid with gold, and a magnificent canopy to shelter the Prince from the sun: Dara was now seen seated on a miserable and worn-out animal, covered with filth; he no longer wore the necklace of large pearls which distinguish the princes of Hindoustan, nor the rich turban and embroidered coat; he and his son were now habited in dirty cloth of the coarsest texture, and his sorry turban was wrapt round with a Kashmir ["Kachemire"] shawl or scarf, resembling that worn by the meanest of the people.
From about 1775 high quality cashmere shawls began to find their way to France and England. They were acquired by travellers, explorers and military personnel as well as members of the East India Company, who, appreciating their beauty and warmth, brought them back as presents.
In Carola Oman's life of Sir Walter Scott, The Wizard of the North, it is recorded that Scott's French bride Charlotte Carpentier was given a cashmere shawl costing 50 guineas (L50/ $100) for her trousseau in 1797. In those days this was an enormous sum of money.
The collapse of the Mughal Empire left many weavers unemployed. The situation however, was saved by the enormous increase in demand from Europe, where the shawls became popular in the latter part of the 18th century, but the huge revival of the nineteenth century began with one very special cashmere shawl, a rare pashmina which belonged to the Mameluke Pasha Mehmet Ali, who ruled Egypt in the name of the Ottoman emperor. The nineteenth century: cashmere in France and England In 1798, Napoleon decided to conquer Egypt, apparently for no better reason than that Alexander the Great had done so, and because "all glory resides there".
He duly sailed from Toulon, landed an army of 38,000 men and defeated the Mameluke cavalry by forming tight infantry squares (ironically the very same tactic the British used to defeat him at Waterloo). Eager to appease Napoleon, Pasha Mehmet Ali made him a present of the precious object he could find, his prized cashmere pashmina shawl, and Napoleon duly bestowed it upon his beloved Empress Josephine.
Josephine instantly fell in love with the fabulously soft cashmere and soon made it a staple of her wardrobe, amassing a collection of more than 1,000 cashmere shawls. Cashmere was soon so popular that François Bernier's long forgotten Voyages de François Bernier, contenant la description des états du Grand Mogol, de l'Indoustan, du royaume de Cachemire was reprinted by the official government press in 1830.
The Empress Eugenie, wife of Napoleon III, would likewise champion cashmere. Precious, sumptuous to the touch, and extremely expensive, cashmere quickly became the preserve of royals like the young Queen Victoria of England, who habitually wore white cashmere stockings, only cashmere being soft enough to be permitted to caress the royal thighs. So enamoured was Victoria with cashmere that she reared her own herd of cashmere goats, which had the run of Windsor Park. (Perhaps as a nod to Her Majesty's enthusiasm, a cashmere goat was adopted as the mascot of the Royal Welch Fusiliers.
Some of the goats escaped and their descendants colonised Llandudno's Great Orme park. Today the wild cashmere flock has grown to such an extent that according to a 2001 report on the BBC, Llandudno councillors were considering using contraceptive pills to control the numbers.
Why not adopt the far simpler alternative of finding some of the animals a new home? Many a home-knitter would be glad of a cashmere goat or two in the garden.) Championed by the Queen, cashmere became the fabric of choice for every gentlewoman in England. The following article represents the views of the time.
The Cashmere Shawl:
A garment capable of appearing the most feminine and graceful in the world. We scarcely know a truer test of a gentlewoman's taste in dress than her selection of a shawl, and her manner of wearing it: and yet if the truth must be owned, it is the test from which few Englishwomen come with triumph. Generally speaking, the shawl is not their forte, in fact they are rather afraid of it.
They acknowledge its comfort and convenience for the open carriage, or the sea-side promenade, but rarely recognize it for what it is, a garment capable of appearing the most feminine and graceful in the world. They are too often oppressed by a heap of false notions on the subject; have somehow an idea that a shawl is old or dowdy ; and yet have a dim comprehension that the costly shawls which they more frequently hear of than see, must have some unimagined merits to prove an excuse for their price. It was not until quite the close of the last century, that Cashmeres were prized in Europe.
Travellers' tales had mentioned them, it is true, but that was before the locomotive age, and when travellers were few, and travelling unspeakably tedious; when soldiers went to India to hold and increase their country's territory; when a few traders made princely fortunes; but when every system of interchange was narrow and exclusive, and people were taught to be content with clumsy common wares, instead of raising them to excellence by the spur of competition.
It is said that in the year 1787, the ambassadors of Tippoo Saib left behind them at Paris a few Cashmere shawls - intended as gracious presents we presume - but which were regarded solely as curiosities, and not even much esteemed in that capacity, for we learn that they were employed as dressing-gowns, and even used for carpeting!
Not till after Napoleon's expedition to Egypt did they become the rage; and a solid good resulted from that campaign in the introduction of a fabric destined to be the model of one of the most famous. Madame Emile Gaudin, a lady of Greek extraction and a reigning beauty, is reputed to have first worn a Cashmere shawl in Paris; but if we know any thing of the "Consuls Wife," or the "Empress Josephine," she was not very far behind, for her love of Cashmeres was next to her love of flowers, as more than one anecdote might be called in to testify.
What scenes this history of an inanimate object conjures up to the minds eye. These leaders of fashion when the old century went out on the young Republic of France , whose Master was already found- who were they? The wives of men who were working out the destiny of Europe , guided by a chief who, be he judged for good or evil, looms on the page of history in giant proportions!
As we have said, the Cashmere shawl became the rage. The farce of pretended equality in France was acted out, and the curtain dropped on it in preparation for quite a different tableau; people no longer risked their lives by dressing elegantly, and it was not now expected that the soubrette, the blanchisseuse, or the poissonniere should dress precisely the same as the lady of a general officer.
There was wealth, too, in the land, and the enormous sums demanded for these shawls were readily forthcoming. Sums equivalent to two or three hundred pounds of our money were commonly paid even for soiled worn articles, which had done duty as turbans to Mogul soldiers, or girded a Bayadere's waist, or been the sacerdotal garment of an idolatrous priest- and had very frequently been thus used by more than one generation.
It is true, the durability of the fabric and the lasting properties of the dyes, permitted the cleansing of these shawls with scarcely perceptible injury or deterioration, but still it was only the intrinsic merit of the thing, which could have overcome the natural repugnance which the known or suspected history of a Cashmere must in many instances have occasioned.
The Levant traders had now large commissions, and the result was that new shawls were soon more easily procurable, but still bearing an enormous price. A brief description of the manufacture of Indian shawls will show how it is that they never can be cheap. The wool of the Thibet goat is the finest in the world, and for the best shawls only the finest even of this wool is used.
The animals are shorn once a year, and a full-grown goat only produces about eight ounces of wool of this first quality. There is every reason to suppose that the climate has very much to do with the perfection of the animal, for attempts to naturalize it elsewhere have all more or less failed.
The loom on which a Cashmere shawl is woven is of the rudest and most primitive description- the warp being supported by two sticks, and the woof entirely worked in by the human hand. This slow laborious process permits a neatness and exactness of finish beyond the power of any machinery to rival; and when we take into account a life-long practice in the art, and- remembering the Hindu "castes," which usually limit a family to the exercise of a single craft- in most instances the family secrets and traditions which have been preserved, we cease to wonder at the perfection of the work.
These Asiatic weavers, temperate in their habits and readily contented, receive a wage of from threehalfpence to two pence a day; but if their wants more nearly approximated to those of an European laborer, what would an Indian Cashmere be worth, when we are informed that from thirty to forty men have sometimes been employed from eighteen months to two years in the manufacture of a single shawl!
There is something very kindling to the imagination in the thought of these swarthy weavers, attired perhaps in our Manchester calicoes, laboring patiently for weeks and months to produce a fabric worthy of rank and royalty, without other than most vague or false ideas of the scenes in which their work will be displayed.
The borders of these shawls are made in several pieces- sometimes as many as from ten to twenty, and are afterward sewn together to form the pattern; and by the border an Indian shawl may always be recognized from a French or Paisley one, however close an imitation the latter may appear.
Every stitch of the border of the Indian shawl being worked by the hand is distinct in itself, and may be pulled out- though it is not very easily detached- without further injury to the fabric; whereas the shawl made on a French or British loom has the border formed in one piece, whence a long thread may at any time be readily drawn.
Indeed there is no surer test by which a lady may know a veritable Cashmere, than by examining the borderbut if she have a fine eye for color this faculty will also assist her.
The preparation of the dyes which the Hindus use is still a secret, of which they are very chary, removing their operations to a distance whenever they have reason to dread inquisitive lookers on. But the result in their fabrics is perceived in the peculiar richness and clearness of their hues, and at the same time absence of glare; the reds, blues, and greens, reminding one more of the harmonious tints of old stained glass than anything else.
Receiving the impetus of fashion, the shawls of Cashmere have become, within the last dozen years, richer and more elaborate than ever- their richness and elaboration of pattern necessitating even a firmer and more substantial groundwork than heretofore, but still the method of their manufacture remains unchanged, as might be expected from the conservatism inseparable from semi-barbarism.
London is now one of the chief marts for Cashmeres. It may not be generally known that London dealers send quantities of shawls to France , America , Russia , and even Turkey , a convincing proof of the enterprise of British merchants. They supply many other foreigners, especially finding a market among them for the gold embroidered shawls, which are frequently worn on state occasions at foreign courts.
The duty on Indian shawls is now only about five per cent. Twice a year there are public sales, to which dealers are invited by catalogues sent to Paris and other continental cities.
One of the great merits of a Cashmere seems that it is really never out of date- and when, comparing even the old pine patterns with the large long shawls, the rich borders of which sweep in graceful flowing lines into the very center, we feel that they are still "of one family," and hold together- if the comparison be not too fanciful- rich and poor, in right clannish fashion. Some of the most modern and most costly Indian shawls resemble in pattern that of the long French Cashmere, simply however because the French have copied the Indian design.
The gold and silver thread employed for the embroidery of Cashmere shawls is usually prepared in the following manner; and the chief seat of the manufacture is at Boorhampoor, a city of the Deccan . A piece of the purest ore is beaten into a cylindrical form about the size of a thick reed, and then beaten out in length until it will pass through an orifice the eighth of an inch in diameter; it is drawn through still finer perforations until it is reduced to the proportion of a bobbin thread.
Now a different plan is pursued; the wire already produced is wound upon several reels which work upon pivots, the ends of the thread being passed through still finer holes, and then affixed to a large reel which is set rapidly in motion and still further attenuates the threads. It is afterward flattened on an anvil of highly polished steel, by a practiced and dexterous workman; and by an ingenious process, a silk thread is afterward plated, or sheathed as it were by this minute wire.
It is asserted that if a lump of silver be gilt in the first instance before being drawn into wire, it will retain the gilding through all the subsequent hard usage of hammering, winding, and drawing to which it is subjected, coming out to the very last a gilded thread. It is easy to understand that gold and silver thread of this pure description, unlike tinsel finery, it is not liable to tarnish
