The principal kind of wool used in adulteration was a soft white wool imported from Kirma». A shawl even of adulterated pashm still sells for double what a shawl of sheep's wool would, though the work would otherwise be the satne.
The shawls designated in India are— Shal-kitoni-kar, a shawl woven of twisted thread, giving it a peculiar, regular, serrated texture.
Shal-sada, a plain woollen shawl without em broidery.
Shal-doridar, a shawl having a dori or edging. Do-shala is a double shawl.
Formerly', Kashmir shawls were exquisitely woven, with an elegance and chasteness of design, softness and finish in quality, arrangetnent of colours and use of dyes, which the finest Paisley and French shawls do not approach. These ex quisite shawls of Kashmir became rarer, and their place was usurped by hand-embroidered fabrics , of lower value, with more showy and more vulgar patterns. In the Panjab and in Dehli, also, workmen commenced to embroider Kashmir clotha and net with floss silk and braid, for sale to Europeans, who wear thein as tunics, jackets, scarfs, and the like. In the hand-worked Kashtnir shawls, RB also in the Dehli work, wooden needles of hard wood are used, slightly charred, with a hole in the centre of the needle to receive the yarn. The scarfs of brocaded gold and silver, laid upon red, white, and green grounds, and worked in and interspersed with beetles' wings and other ornaments, are admired by Europeans. One of the causes of deterioration in this manufacture has been in Europeans inducing the weavers to produce fabrics of a style far inferior to the artistic articles of the Kashmiri.
Paris shawls are principally of the kind known as French Kashmir, in which, by the aid of the i draw-loom and of the jacquard, a surface appear ance is given precisely similar to that of the oriental shawls. The figures and colours of
Indian shawla are faithfully copied, and the yarns of the weft are not only equal in number to the colours of the pattern, but there are also as many little shuttles or pirns filled with these yarns ex there are colours to be repeated in the breadth of the piece. Each of these small pints or bobbitus passes through only that portion of the flower in which the colour of its yarn is to appear, and stops on the one aide and the other of the cloth exactly at its limit ; it then returns upon itaelf, after having crossed the thread of the adjoin ing shuttle. Front this reciprocal interweaving of the various yarns of the shuttles, it happeng that, although the weft is made up of a great number of different threada, yet they form a con tinuous line in the whole breadth of the web, upon which the lay or batten acts in the usual manner. The great art consists in avoiding confusion of the shuttles, and in not striking up the lay till all have done their part. A woman, assisted by two girls, is able to conduct the whole operation. But this close imitation of the oriental shawl is a very slow process, and therefore the shawls must be necessarily costly. Lyons is famous for its Tibet ' shawls, the weft of which is yarn, with a mixture of spun silk. The shawls of Nimes are celebrated for their low price, and the ingenuity with which spun silk, Tibet down, and cotton nre all worked up together.—Potrell, Panjab; 3foor croft, Tr.• 1Valson ; Tomlinson ; 2IPCulloch ; Cal. Cat., 186 ; FaidA;ner, Kashmir and its Shawls ; Times of India.