Kashmir’s Kani shawl, one of the Valley’s most famous exports from the time of the Mughals, draws its uniqueness from the way it is woven. Made from the coat of Pashmina goats, which are reared in the desert region of Ladakh, it is mostly women who spin the wool into yarn on charkhas in their homes. Craftspersons in the Valley’s Kanihama area then weave the shawls with a rare dexterity.
A designer, known as naqash, creates a pattern. The weaver brings it into life with numerous bobbins or petit sticks loaded with yarn of different colours. There is no embroidery. Neither does the bobbin shuttle from one side to the other of the warp. Instead, tujis or sticks of different colours are inserted at different points across the warp thread. In this, the weaver follows a code prepared by the designer. The task is time-consuming and requires immense patience. One shawl takes at least six months to weave. And this explains its high cost — ₹40,000 to ₹2.5 lakh.
The Kani shawl, which has a Geographical Indication tag, now faces competition from cheaper machine-made shawls from Punjab. But craftsman Mohammad Ramzan isn’t very worried. He says the buyers can tell a machine-made shawl from a hand-made one. Others don’t share his optimism. Micro-chips could be attached to handmade shawls to set them apart from fakes, say experts.
