Fine Pashmina Ring (Palladar) Shawl — Black & Crimson

A fine Kashmiri pashmina ring shawl (Palladar) in black, woven with a self-coloured paisley pattern through the ground and finished at each end with a deep panel of large crimson paisleys on a silver field.

The name comes from the test. A Palladar is a shawl fine enough to be drawn whole through a finger ring — and that is only possible when the pashmina has been hand-spun on a charkha to a thread so fine it is barely visible against the light. Spinners who do this work have often done nothing else for decades. The weaving that follows is just as slow, because yarn this fine breaks if the loom is pushed. There is no machine equivalent and no shortcut; the ring is simply the proof.

This is the patterned version, and it asks more of the loom than our plain pieces do. The black ground carries a paisley woven in its own colour — invisible flat on, and only there when the light moves across the folds. Then the ends abandon restraint entirely for a broad band of crimson and silver paisleys, worked at a scale nothing else on the shawl prepares you for.

Carrying a second, heavier colour scheme across yarn this fine is the difficult part: the pattern has to sit into the cloth without stiffening it, or the shawl stops behaving like a Palladar at exactly the point where it is trying hardest to impress.

Black with crimson is the most formal combination we stock — an evening and wedding piece, and one of the few at this level that reads equally well on a man.

Details

• Ultra-fine hand-spun Kashmiri pashmina
• Handwoven ring shawl — passes through a finger ring
• Self-coloured paisley ground with deep woven crimson end panels
• Approx. 40" × 80"
• Dry clean only
• Handwoven in Kashmir

Hand-spun yarn varies slightly along its length; the faint unevenness you can see against the light is the signature of hand work, not a fault.

Ships in Attan's branded box with a thank-you card, ready to gift.