Fine Pashmina Ring (Palladar) Shawl — Cocoa with Periwinkle Paisley Band

A fine Kashmiri pashmina ring shawl (Palladar) in deep cocoa brown, self-patterned across its entire length with paisley and flowering vine woven in the same colour, and finished at each end with a broad band of tall paisleys on a periwinkle-blue ground in rust, apricot, plum and cream, closed by a plain taupe panel.

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.

A field that is fully patterned, in one colour

Most ring shawls are woven plain, because pattern adds weight and weight ends the ring test. This one is patterned across every inch — but tonally, brown on brown, so the paisley is built into the cloth rather than laid on it in colour. It is the coverage of a jamawar without the weight of one: from a distance the shawl reads as plain cocoa, and only up close does the whole field resolve into paisley.

Brown and blue

The band is the thing to look at. Kashmiri weavers rarely lay a cool blue ground under warm paisleys, because on most shawls it fights. Against cocoa it does the opposite — brown is the one ground that takes periwinkle without either colour going muddy, and the rust and apricot inside the paisleys pull back toward the field so the whole band still belongs to the shawl.

Beyond the band the cloth returns to plain taupe, which frames the design and stops it from running off the edge.

Details

• Ultra-fine hand-spun Kashmiri pashmina
• Handwoven ring shawl — passes through a finger ring
• Self-patterned cocoa field with woven periwinkle and rust paisley end bands
• Plain taupe end panels with fringed edge
• 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.