Tracage des Chales.

Dearest Emily,

For today's post- we are all about Fashion and style. I know, Uncle Joe said I had swapped Fashion for Alice, but hey- old habits die hard- and after all Em, it was Julia's shawls that first gave me my Through the Looking Glass and the Freshwater Circle clue! So, in the style of a children's programme that GiGi used to watch- Blue Peter- 'here's one I made earlier!'

So- Shawls, Emily. 

Our Julia loved a shawl or two- and one of the strands of research ( other than becoming a Dodgson nerd ) that has me all a flutter, is a notion that is becoming increasingly evident to me. This is all about the peculiar style that Julia Margaret Cameron adopted, one that was most probably quite misunderstood by her mid-Victorian conformist contemporaries. But- Em, I rather think that it begat more inspiration to the Bloomsbury set than we have previously acknowledged.

This will unravel over time in my research, so for now let us start with the history of the humble shawl and how it travelled with Julia from Calcutta, to Paris, London, and then Freshwater Bay.( Oh, and lest we forget, onto the Red and White Queens in 'Through the Looking Glass'! )

Here is Wikipedia's Shawl descriptive ( abridged; ) 

A shawl (Persian: شال‎, Shāl, from Sanskrit: शाटी śāṭī is a simple item of clothing, loosely worn over the shoulders, upper body and arms, and sometimes also over the head. It is usually a rectangular or square piece of cloth, that is often folded to make a triangle but can also be triangular in shape. Other shapes includeoblong shawls.

History Kashmir, a state in India, part of which is a disputed territory between India and Pakistan, was a pivotal point through which the wealth, knowledge, and products of ancient India passed to the world. Perhaps the most widely known woven textiles are the famed Kashmir shawls. The Kanikar, for instance, has intricately woven designs that are formalized imitations of Nature. The Chenar leaf (plane tree leaf), apple and cherry blossoms, the rose and tulip, the almond and pear, the nightingale—these are done in deep mellow tones of maroon, dark red, gold yellow and browns. Yet another type of Kashmir shawl is the Jamiavr, which is a brocaded woolen fabric sometimes in pure wool and sometimes with a little cotton added.

The most expensive shawls, called Shatoosh, are made from the beard hairs of the wild ibex and are so fine that a whole shawl can be pulled through a small finger ring.

The paisley motif is so ubiquitous to Indian fabrics that it is hard to realize that it is only about 250 years old. It evolved from 1600's. Early designs depicted single plants with large flowers and thin wavy stems, small leaves and roots. As the designs became denser over time, more flowers and leaves were compacted within the shape of the tree, or issuing from vases or a pair of leaves. By the late 1700s, the archetypal curved point at the top of an elliptical outline had evolved. The elaborate paisley created on Kashmir shawls became the vogue in Europe for over a century, and it was imitations of these shawls woven in factories at Paisley, Scotland, that gave it the name paisley . In the late 1700s and 1800s, the paisley became an important motif in a wide range of Indian textiles, perhaps because it was associated with theMughal court. The naksha, a Persian device like the Jacquard loom invented centuries later, enabled Indian weavers to create sinuous floral patterns and creeper designs in brocade to rival any painted by a brush. The Kashmir shawl that evolved from this expertise in its heyday had greater fame than any other Indian textile. Always a luxury commodity, the intricate, tapestry-woven, fine wool shawl had become a fashionable wrap for the ladies of the English and French elite by the 1700s. The supply fell short of demand and manufacturers pressed to produce more, created convincing embroidered versions of the woven shawls that could be produced in half the time. As early as 1803, Kashmiri needlework production was established to increase and hasten output of these shawls, which had been imitated in England since 1784 and even in France. By 1870, the advent of the Jacquard loom in Europe destroyed the exclusivity of the original Kashmir shawl, which began to be produced in Paisley, Scotland. Even the characteristic Kashmiri motif, the mango-shape, began to be known simply as the paisley.

Kashmiri shawls were high-fashion garments in Western Europe in the early- to mid-1800s. Imitation Kashmiri shawls woven in Paisley, Renfrewshire are the origin of the name of the traditional paisley pattern. 

Uses Shawls are used in order to keep warm, to complement a costume, and for symbolic reasons. Today, shawls are worn for added warmth (and fashion) at outdoor or indoor evening affairs, where the temperature is warm enough for men in suits but not for women in dresses and where a jacket might be inappropriate.

The Kashmir Shawls

Kashmir is India's northernmost state and was the point through which ancient India passed to the world. The Kashmir shawl that evolved from a local expertise had greater fame than any other Indian textile.

Pashmina or Amlikar

The majority of the woollen fabrics of Kashmir, and particularly the best quality shawls, were and are still made of Pashm or Pashmina, which is the wool of Capra hircus, a species of the wild Asian mountain goat. Hence the shawls came to be called Pashmina. The fine fleece used for the shawls is that which grows under the rough, woolly, outer coat of the animal; that from the under-belly, which is shed on the approach of hot weather. The best fleece wool is soft, silky and warm is of the wild goats, and painstakingly gathered from shrubs and rough rocks against which the animals rub off their fleece on the approach of summer. This was undoubtedly the soft fleece wool from which were made the famous and much coveted 'ring shawls' in Mughal times. Unfortunately very inferior and second rate wool taken from domesticated sheep and goats provide most of the wool used today on the looms of Kashmir.

The needle-worked Amlikar or Amli, made from Pashmina wool is a shawl embroidered almost all over with the needle on a plain woven ground. The colours most commonly seen on pashmina shawls are yellow, white, black, blue, green, purple, crimson and scarlet. The design motifs are usually formalised imitations of nature like the leaf, flower and tree designs mentioned above; they are always done in rich colours.

The outlines of the design are further touched up and emphasized with silk or woollen thread of different colours run round the finer details; the stitch used for this is at an angle overlapping darn stitch, all the stitches used are so minute and fine that individually they can be seen with the unaided eye with difficulty. When Pashmina wool is used for the embroidery work, it blends so intimately with the texture of the basic shawl material that it would be difficult to insert even a fine needle between the embroidery stitches and the basic fabric.

So, now you know all about Shawls Emily. Julia is frequently referred to as being swathed in shawls, trailing her shawls, wrapping her invalid husband up in shawls, and giving away her shawls as presents should anyone compliment one she was wearing. Marianne North  visiting Julia in 1877 happened to admire one that Julia had on- so she tore it in half and gave half to Marianne, carrying on wearing the remaining half herself.

It is understandable that Julia would adopt a liking for Kashmiri shawls, having been brought up in India, furthermore, her Aristocratic French ancestry and time at Versailles, would have further elevated the shawl as an object that adorned ladies of Society. Here's an image of fashionable Regency Shawl-garb;

Julia's Mother,  Adeline Pattle ( nee L'etang ) who was brought up in Versaiiles, may have been a fashionable influence on all her daughters, as we shall discover in the next post.

But for now Em, I'm back to Wonderland. Julia's 'White Queen' Shawl ( above ) was inspired by descriptions of Julia's 'openwork' shawls and in particular- a red one. Which I have yet to finish before part two of our Exhibition here at Dimbola.

So- back to work...

Your ever-loving Grand-Mother, GiGi xxx