The elites wore the Jamawari shawl, as depicted in Umrao Jaan

My earliest memories of Jamawari shawls is from rummaging through potlis of fragments in shops on the Bund in Srinagar, with my mother trying to find matching pieces to darn into worn out shawls. The rafugaars or the darners could practically hand stitch fragments, weaving them into whole shawls.

They would be the prized retainers for any lady of influence, to be kept as a closely guarded secret!
Jamawar shawls are considered luxurious heirlooms, made in a variety of colours and with really intricate work. Jamawar or “the robe of wool yardage” came from Persia in the 15th century. Sultan Zain-Al-Abidin summoned weavers from Turkmenistan to teach their skills to the Kashmiris.
The creation of a Jamawari shawl requires incredible skill in putting together fragments of several complex and extremely fine loom embroideries, interlocking one motif with the other, layering one pattern on another on a predetermined naqsha rhythmically sung out by the master craftsman to his assistants.
Often the tenor of his voice could determine the 64 variants of colours or tighten the twilled tapestry. Patterns like rega-buta (little flowers), kirk butis (large flowers) and jaldars (patterns created using net) are found on Jamawars. The density of design predates computer programming and all this is accomplished by the miracle of hand, memory and culture!
The Mughal era saw this art flourish, and it reached its height during Emperor Akbar’s time. In 1664, the memoirs of the famous French traveller Francois Berneir mentioned the softness, beauty and delicacy of the Jamawar shawls. Napolean Bonaparte found Jamawars so exquisite that he gifted 17 such shawls to his second wife, Marie-Louise!
While visiting the toshokhana (the royal treasury) in Srinagar after becoming advisor to the state in 1971 for the development of handicrafts, I had an interesting experience. A dark, musty storeroom, padlocked many times over, contained a treasure of amazing shawls gifted to the king of Kashmir over two centuries. These were wrapped in the most ingenious way, squeezed tightly between herbs and wooden planks, so no silverfish or air could enter.
Jamawars have always been expensive, owing to the amount of work involved in producing them. I bought an original Jamawar for `600, almost 30 years ago, a princely sum then. I presume that today its value is above a lakh. And it looks as beautiful as it did when I purchased it!
I also have a memory of visiting the darkly lit huts of the weavers in Kanihama village on the way to Gulmarg, while designing Kashmir’s first showroom at Baba Kharak Singh Marg (called Zoon) more than four decades ago. In one such dim-lit hut, a master weaver told me sadly that his father had gone blind making a shawl and he himself could find no assistants. I came out with a feeling of strange relief. Skills are not as important as one’s eyesight, I felt.
No wonder these shawls become heirlooms and prized possessions as the skills to make them disappeared around the turn of the 20th century. Of course, the Anglo-Prussian wars and the huge factories making machine-made copies of the handmade Jamawars in Paisley (UK) and Lille (France) added to the destruction of a livelihood that, at its height employed more than 2,00,000 people.
I see many mothers gifting their Jamawari shawls to their daughters on their weddings. It’s almost like passing over heritage to the younger generation!