Weiner Mihályné szerk.: Az Iparművészeti Múzeum Évkönyvei 9. (Budapest, 1966)

IPARMŰVÉSZETI MÚZEUM — MUSÉE DES ARTS DECORATIFS - Horváth, Vera: Kashmir Shawls in the Museum of Applied Arts

by the double border, this shawl may be of the same age as the previous one. The considerable differences in the design of the two shawls do not provide any certainty of date, and particularly not in the first half of the XlXth century when exportation was on its peak. In fact, this period is characterized by a rich variety of differences in pattern, and colour, as well as by a coexistence of older and newer types of shawls and decorations. Thus the abovementioned structural elements, such as the number and size of the border, the decoration of the centrel field, the length of the large pattern, the number of parts of a shawl, etc. cannot be left out of account in dating. As far as these late shawls of the XlXth century are concerned, the question of genuineness and of European influence may justly be raised. European pattern books have been actually used at that time in Kashmir. However, the result i.e. the decoration of the shawls make undoubtedly a Kashmir impression, and this shows the great receptive and assimilating force of Kashmir art. In those years the usual cream ground colour is replaced by the coloured ground of the border; it is mostly red, like on the previous shawl, or of some other colour. The richness of ornamental art is adequately illustrated by some fragments of girdles or borders (figs. 6—9.). On one of these fragments the decoration of the natural-tinted central zone is composed of fan-shaped flowers and smal cones (fig. 6.). On another dark red piece (fig. 7.) the pattern is composed of interlaced and strongly bent cone motifs of different size. Decorated with small flowers and leaves, the cone appears again on a wine-red fragment (fig. 8.). On the yellow ground fabric of a transversal corner decoration (fig. 9.) the main ornamental pattern is shaped in a more elongated and binding form with an easy internal space filling. Made also of several pieces, there is a specimen of the square shawl type that is appearing since the 1810-s (fig. 10.). In compliance with the fashion of the fourties when the shawl was folded up in a triangle to be worn, the double border of the clean cream ground fabric is made inversely on each ;side, so as to show the face of all of the four borders. It is decorated with a •cone interlaced with entangled meanders, and with two great applied corner ornaments. On the ground of the latter, its date of origin may be about 1850. The next group includes embroidered covers and fragments (figs. 11—14.). 'The wool-threaded embroidery with satin- and stem-stitch is of exquisite fineness, particularly on one of the fragments which makes the complete impression of woven cloth (fig. 11.). It was made about 1820—1830. Its trimming is composed of cone and small flowers in alternating position, while the great corner decoration is made of strongly conventionalized tulips. An equally high level of embroidery is shown by a cover (fig. 12.); the double border is decorated with cones and cypresses, while the central surface is decorated with a great médaillon in the middle, half médaillons and corner ornaments. Fine embroidery can be seen on a corner ornament (fig. 13.) and two minor girdle fragments (figs. 14—15.). The silk cover on fig. 16, with its rather rough chain-stitch embroidery, represents the decline of embroidery that has taken place in the second half of the century. These pieces were 12. Cover, embroidered, Kashmir, between 1830—1850