Kashmir shawl, unknown maker from India

In the second and third quarters of the 19th century, the patterned borders of Kashmir shawls expanded into the central field of these garments and shrank to a small medallion in the 1860s. The buta, or bent-tipped cone motif, became increasingly elongated,
enhancing the fashionable silhouettes of Parisian women. Used as an element of abstract design, the motif changed orientations and size within a single shawl, intertwined with adjoining cones, and visually moved in and out of an elaborate field. On later shawls
such as this one, the emphasis shifts from the quality of the fiber to the design.

Prototypes for the 19th-century Kashmir shawl, which were favored by European women, consisted of long, narrow lengths of lustrous cloth decorated with shallow borders of cone-shaped flowering plants. Ruling elite men in India and Iran wore them as turbans, sashes, and shawls. Prized primarily for their exceptionally fine, warm, and lustrous materials, they were made from asli tus, or fleece from the wild Himalayan ibex, and pashmina, from the domesticated Capra hircus or cashmere goat that thrived above 10,000 feet in the mountains of Tibet, Ladakh, and Chinese Turkestan.
Kashmir shawls endured many changes in women’s dress to maintain the shawl’s status as a symbol of high fashion until the early 1870s. The development of the bustle in the late 1860s and the new availability of inexpensive European copies of Kashmir shawls led to a decline in sales of genuine Kashmir shawls. Through the mid-1870s, magnificent shawls continued to be made and given as wedding gifts, but most of these were carefully stored and never worn.