Object Note
Part of a duo from the Dr Joan Coleman Collection alongside (ZI2020.500773 EUROPE).
Object History
This (jacquard) woven (long_shawl) dating back to the 19th century was originally a part of the Dr Joan Coleman Collection. It was first purchased at an auction at Sotheby’s London in January 1976 along with another shawl – ZI2020.500773 EUROPE. Later The Zay Initiative managed to acquire it from Kerry Taylor Auctions in 2020.
Dr Joan Coleman began collecting shawls in 1976 and developed her lifelong passion for collecting. She was a regular at the London salesrooms of Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips – three of the most outstanding auction houses of the period in the world – getting to know the dealers and learning in the process. She acquired vast knowledge and dedicated hours carefully cataloguing her ever-growing collection. She intended to loan her collection to different museums and institutions for the benefit of learning and education. Her collection is one of the largest and the finest private shawl collections to have ever graced the world with shawls ranging from Kashmir, Paisley, Edinburgh, Norwich, France, and Iran.
Object Features
This vibrantly colourful piece is a long_shawl woven with wool, in a Kashmiri flavour and (kani) style weave. Dated c. 1860 it is of a European (jacquard) origin, however, its exact location – France or Scotland – is debatable.
As a European long_shawl it is void of any typical characteristics of its usual contemporaries. Instead of a plain rectangular ground, this shawl has a butterfly-shaped plain ivory medallion in the centre which is followed by an intricate floral design woven in scarlet red and brown. This is further expanded in delicate (paisley)/(buta) and (palmettes) densely overlapping each other in an array of scarlet, orange and brown, often giving an illusion of a pink hue from afar. The (phala) – if it could be called so – contains four elongated and thin paisleys separated by an intricately woven (jaal)of overlapping paisleys, palmettes and other floral motifs.
The (hashiya) and the (tanjir) are of the same dimension and contain different floral patterns encased in different geometric shapes. The (warp) ends are finished with arches of different colours – scarlet, orange, (turquoise)/(pheroza), moss green, and brown – with threads of corresponding colours hanging loose in a series of fringed tassels. The (weft) ends have narrow edging strips possibly of (satin) in a metallic green hue woven as a part of the ground with the wool.
There are quite a few darning across the field of the (shawl) in tiny slots bearing testament to its wear and tear of the bygone years.
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