A horizontal rectangular shawl border featuring a row of nine large paisley cones on beige ground. The colors within the cones rotate between red, black, beige, light blue, and yellow green. Each contain a small floral border in a contrasting color with a central bouquet with four flowers. Each cone is surrounded by thin green leaves creating a fur-like border that crosses at top and curls to either side. A broad guard borders four sides around the central cones and extends up to top of shawl. Border creates a wide H shape that is connected at bottom. The border consists of octagonal medallions, each framing a floral spray in shades of green, red, black, and light blue, with oak leaves between. Broad border at the top with a row of decorated scalloped mounds with flowery sprays growing on and in them. Small cypress shape in center of each and between each mound. Thin zigzagged lines in pink, brown, and green define each section.

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See more objects with the tag borders, women's fashion accessories, shawl, warmth, Imitative, paisley, oak leaves.

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Object Timeline

1954	We acquired this object.
2008	We photographed this object.
2013	We photographed this object.
2014	We photographed this object. This was an Object of the Day.
2019	We exhibited this object.
2024	You found it!

Shawl Border (Russia)

This is a Shawl border. It was workshop of Dmitry Apollonovich Kolokol'tsev. It is dated early 19th century and we acquired it in 1954. Its medium is wool, silk and its technique is plain weave with discontinuous weft (tapestry). It is a part of the Textiles department.

Kashmir shawls were essential fashion accessories for stylish women of means in nineteenth-century Europe. Initially imported from India, they were superbly crafted and very expensive. Strong demand encouraged production of Kashmir-style shawls in several European countries. The French and British dominated European production using draw looms and jacquard looms. In contrast, Russian shawls were hand-woven, a function of the essentially feudal nature of the Russian economy in the early nineteenth century. The workforce consisted of enslaved serfs, many of who were very talented, highly skilled, and specially trained artisans.[i]

In about 1806, several small, estate-based textile workshops in Russia began the hand-woven production of Kashmir-style shawls. These workshops had previously produced carpets using reversible, plain weave, dovetail tapestry construction, a technique they applied with great success to shawls, producing two-sided fabrics of astonishing complexity.[ii]

Shawls from the Russian workshops won numerous prizes for their beautiful designs and fine craftsmanship at local and international exhibitions, including the Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851 in London. After the abolition of serfdom in Russia in 1861, the cost of labor to hand-weave two sided shawl borders was prohibitive, and the production of these remarkable textiles in Russia largely came to an end.[iii]

[i] Priscilla Roosevelt, Life on a Russian Country Estate: A Social and Cultural History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 246-47.

[ii] L.V. Efimova, Russian Kerchiefs and Shawls, trans. Liudmila Lezhneva (Leningrad: Aurora Art Publishers, 1985), 28.

[iii] Efimova, Russian Shawls, 28.

This object was featured in our Object of the Week series in a post titled A Uniquely Two-Sided Shawl.

It is credited Museum purchase from Au Panier Fleuri Fund.

Horizontally rectangular shawl fragment. Backdrop is a well-worn tan color. Fragment has two rows of repeating teardrop shapes; one small across the center of the fragment, and one larger at the bottom. In between the two rows is a row of small, red circles, each circle comprised of flower petals. In between each teardrop shape within the large, bottom row is a leafy vine, extending from the bottom row of red circles to the row between the two teardrop rows. The teardrops themselves are comrpised of small blue and red patterns.

Shawl Border (France)
silk.
Gift of Anonymous Donor.
1941-67-2

Its dimensions are

H x W: 62.5 × 140 cm (24 5/8 × 55 1/8 in.)

Cite this object as

Shawl Border (Russia); Workshop of Dmitry Apollonovich Kolokol'tsev ((Russian, n.d)); wool, silk; H x W: 62.5 × 140 cm (24 5/8 × 55 1/8 in.); Museum purchase from Au Panier Fleuri Fund; 1954-54-2

This object was previously on display as a part of the exhibition Paisley.

Short URL http://cprhw.tt/o/2Cj4p/
Accession Number 1954-54-2
Object ID 18401277