1860s Paisley shawl
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1855-1870 A long shawl in silk and wool
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The shawl spread out
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Detail showing the centre
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Detail of the shawl
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Detail of one corner
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Detail of the centre of one end
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Detail of the reverse of the centre at one end
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Detail of the edge at a corner
Description
The shawl has a warp of silk which is mostly red except for a section in the centre which has been dyed black for the field; the warp at each end has also been dyed to match the colours of the fringe gates.
The weft is polychrome wool with red predominating, and pattern is woven in twill. The banding visible across the shawl is caused by the variation in shade of different dye-lots of the weft yarns.
The design takes up a whole quarter of the surface and is mirrored in each corner. It has the elongated scrolling shapes typical of this period and is densely filled with a mass of tiny detail. The field is plain black with the design intruding all round.
The straight-edged border is 3⅞" wide at the ends and 4¼" wide at the sides.
The fringe gates on each end are 2¼" wide, divided into patterned sections, and the 2¼" deep fringe is made of the warp threads, which are now somewhat matted and missing in places. Along a 4" section at each end the warp threads have been knotted into tassels, maybe to strengthen the fringe at the corners.
The shawl is 66" wide and 134" long; it may have been woven in Paisley, but there was also a thriving shawl-weaving industry in France.
There are a number of small holes, some of which have been darned. On the back in one corner two sections of tape are sewn with numbers stamped on them; one is 149943 and the other is 51939, with what might be 6 S 2 written in ink on each.
Contemporary illustrations
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Fashion drawing in La Mode Illustrée, August 1861
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Detail from In Memoriam by Alfred Stevens, c.1861. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
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Fashion plate in La Mode Illustrée, 1865
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Detail from a cartoon in Punch, January 1867
History
In shawls like this, the different coloured areas meant that the warp had to be different colours; this could be achieved by tie-dying, but another method was to fix the warp in a frame where sections could be screwed down leaving only the desired area exposed, and thus preventing the colour from penetrating elsewhere, in the dyebath. This took great skill.
Contemporary items
More shawls from the Hopkins Collection can be seen in Shawls, available from the Hopkins Costume Trust bookshop.