Fine Pashmina Ring (Palladar) Shawl — Graphite with Gold & Turquoise Pallas

A fine Kashmiri pashmina ring shawl (Palladar) in deep graphite — a charcoal so dark it reads as black until the light moves across it — self-patterned along its whole length with a lattice of paisley medallions woven in the same colour, and finished at each end with a broad woven palla of large curling paisleys.

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.

Two ends, two palettes

The unusual thing about this shawl is that the two pallas are not the same. One end is worked on a saffron-gold ground with paisleys in red, coral, lilac and turquoise; the other is worked on turquoise and lilac with the same paisleys in reverse, warm on cool instead of cool on warm.

This is a deliberate old-shawl practice rather than a mistake. A weaver who has drawn one palette well will invert it at the second end to show the same design read two ways — and for the wearer it means one shawl behaves like two, depending on which end you let fall at the front.

A ground that is patterned, not plain

Most ring shawls are woven plain, because pattern adds weight and weight ends the ring test. This one is self-patterned across its whole length — tonally, graphite on graphite — so the paisley medallions are built into the cloth rather than laid on it in colour. From a distance the field reads as plain dark grey; up close the whole lattice appears.

Graphite is the reason both pallas work. On true black the turquoise end would go cold and the gold end would shout; on a grey-black neither does.

Details

• Ultra-fine hand-spun Kashmiri pashmina
• Handwoven ring shawl — passes through a finger ring
• Self-patterned graphite field with two differently coloured woven pallas — one gold, one turquoise
• Plain graphite 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.