TAPESTRY FLOWERS
Early Masterpiece Shawls of Kashmir

What Did The Earliest Shawl Look Like?
Answering the second question - What did the earliest shawls look like? - is likewise difficult but evidence available from examining the small number of extant pre-1700 shawls did allow a credible hypothesis to be drawn. In 1955 John Irwin, former curator of the Indian Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum, published a catalog of the Museum's Kashmir shawl collection entitled "Shawls". Irwin's theory stated there was a chartable progression beginning with simple and highly naturalistic floral forms to ones of increasingly greater complexity and abstraction. The wide range of Kashmir shawls from the various production periods discovered since then has continued to support and verify Irwin's observations.

Less than twenty years after Irwin published his theory a small but highly important collection of fragments was discovered by chance in the Victoria and Albert Museum. One of these is the earliest example of Kashmir shawl weaving and it provides some important clues to answer this question. These small fragments that number about two dozen were recovered from the inner lining of a coat - the Rich War Jacket - that had formerly belonged to Tipu Sultan of Mysore. Near the end of the 18th century Tipu organized numerous insurrections against England's encroachment into his tribal territory in southern India. For quite some time he was successful in disrupting their plans but finally on February 26, 1792 he was defeated and forced to surrender to the British General Lord Cornwallis, thus ending the Third Mysore War.

Under the terms of the Treaty of Seringapatam, signed by Tipu and Cornwallis, Tipu agreed to cease his resistance. However seven years later he again took up arms but this time was his last. In what is now known as the Fourth Mysore War he met his death and was killed in battle. Many of his relics including his Rich War Jacket, the one containing the shawl fragments within the inner lining, were acquired as spoils of war and eventually found their way back to England in care of the East India Company. The jacket was subsequently presented to the Prince of Wales and then, in 1811, was donated into the Royal Collections. Sometime later it went into the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum where it remained untouched in the care of the India Department.

In 1971 when the coat was disassembled for restoration the fragments of shawl cloth used for an inner lining were discovered. A few of the more significant ones are illustrated in the Plates section (Plates One, Three and Four) of this exhibition but one the one in question Plate One(fig.8), is shown here. There is little doubt this is the most important and earliest example of Kashmir tapestry-twill weaving extant. But aside that fact its small size and highly enigmatic design present more questions than answers.