Stylistic features. There is no ‘Afghan style’ in shawls; during the 67 years of Afghan domination the designers continued the process, begun in the previous Mughal regime, of manipulating and developing the Mughal canon of floral design. By the early 18th century, they had transformed the Mughal single-flower motif into a complex manyblossomed flower, and before long into a bouquet of variegated blooms, often emerging from an impossibly tiny vase or pot, and tapering towards the top, somewhat like a cypress. An almost invariable feature was a deliberate lack of symmetry, with the topmost blossom gracefully inclined to left or right. This was the motif that typically was repeated across the pallavs of shawls; it is often referred to generically as the buta. Related to the buta was its small cousin, the buti, a stylized single flower; while a form intermediate between the two may be referred to as the buta-buti.

Shawl

A comparatively late development of the Mughal– Afghan style was the raceme, a spray of small leaves or flower-heads, which could be used both as a means of shaping and defining the buta, and also as a foil to the predominantly roundish shapes of the different flowers of which it was composed. Around the same time, the designers also conceived the idea of placing butis or sprays in the spaces between the butas. It may have been around the time of the transition from Afghan to Sikh rule that this kind of infill spread over the whole background necessitating a voided outline around the buta, and thus transforming it into the familiar motif known in India variously as badam (almond), ambi or kairi (mango), or kalgai (plume), and in the Englishspeaking world as the paisley. In Afghan-period shawls, the side-borders (hashiya) and crossborders above and below the main pallav-design (zanjeer) are usually quite narrow, no more than two or three centimetres; and often of a stylized and standardized floral meander. Although the hashiya was at this time woven integrally with of the body of the shawl, its warps were usually a contrasting colour, and latterly might often be of silk rather than pashmina yarn.

The earliest shawls in the collection may be dated to approximately 1780, about 30 years after the Afghan conquest of Kashmir; most of the others attributed to the Afghan period would be from the early years of the 19th century up to about 1820. They represent the climax of the classic Mughal– Afghan style, and the early development of a new phase of classic design.