TAPESTRY FLOWERS
Early Masterpiece Shawls of Kashmir

This naturally occurring process facilitated collection of wild goat hair for spinning the fibers for weaving the most luxurious and rare types of Kashmir shawls. Although this system was rather primitive and unreliable it was the only method available to collect these wild goat fibers. History indicates only the Mughal Emperor and members of his immediate family were allowed to possess and wear shawls made from them, they were forbidden to all others. Here is a description from what is known as The Doomsday Book, written circa 1550 for the great Mogul Emperor Akbar I:

"His majesty is very fond of woolen stuffs, especially shawls...(and he)...has ordered four kinds to be made... (the) First...(which is known as) Toos Assel, which is the wool of an animal...whose natural color in general is grey, inclining to red, though some are perfectly white, and these shawls are incomparable for lightness, warmth and softness. Formerly they were always made with wool in its original state but his majesty has had some of them dyed, and it is surprising that they will not take the red color."

Toos Assel is more now more commonly known as asli tus and it is so rare that still today no known shawl can be positively identified as being made solely of wild goat hairs. An example in the Victoria and Albert Museum's collection(fig.4) is the most likely candidate. The questions surrounding the identification of these fibers will possibly change when a group of the earliest known examples, including figure 4 and many others illustrated here will be finally subjected to in-depth forensic analysis.

Investigations so far indicate the best shawls were made from a mixture in varying proportions of wild goat hairs with others harvested from domesticated goats or sheep. However many Kashmir shawls, even ones of good quality, have no wild material at all in their composition. These as well as lesser quality ones were made solely from domesticated sheep wool and much coarser qualities of goat hair than asli tus. This type of domesticated sheep wool exists in a number of different qualities the finest being called pashmina. But note asli tus and pashmina are bantered about as trade names and, until they are scientifically investigated, they will remain interchangeable and confusing.

Beginning sometime in the early 20th century another term, shah tus, became associated with Kashmir shawl weaving. In theory shah tus indicates the shawl was woven from pure wild goat hair but in practice this, too, is only a trade name describing a variable quality of domesticated goat hair mixed with high quality domesticated sheep wool (pashmina). These different types of rare wools, whether wild or domesticated from either goat or sheep, could all produce a fine thread but only true wild goat hair enabled a stable thread of unbelievably extreme fineness to be spun from it. Figure 5 is a photo made with an electron microscope of a sample of high quality goat hair from a shawl believed to contain asli tus.