Wedding Shawl, T00.45.87
Posted: Jan 8th, 2020 | Collection Spotlight

Our Object of the Week is a wedding shawl (odhani) from India, chosen by Farooq Ikram, Membership Coordinator at the Textile Museum!

Farooq – who is a textile artist and a connoisseur of textiles from this area – tells us why he picked it:

“I chose this object because I love the embroidery and the material. This shawl is from Rajasthan (India). It is hand woven in a thick cotton. Rajasthan has a desert (Thar), which goes over into Pakistan (Sindh), and we see a lot of this kind of embroidery. The nomadic people there also used different metals and mirrors in their textiles. The red is associated with good luck and fertility. Personally, I am drawn to these crafts of the area; I even have a piece like this at home. It shows their lifestyle – they were made by the mothers and grandmothers from the time a girl was born.”

Links: See this wedding shawl in our online collection.

Post a Comment