High in the mountains, the changthangi goat sheds an undercoat so fine it can pass through a ring, combed rather than shorn, gathered fibre by fibre each spring. This is where every Kashmir Loom shawl begins, long before Srinagar, long before a needle or a bobbin comes near it. We're delighted to welcome Kashmir Loom to the Selvedge Artisan shop, and to share a little of the story behind the shawls before you explore the collection.
Above: Changthangi goats graze on a nearby mountain. Below: An artisan seated at the loom, preparing the fine cashmere threads.
The house was founded in Srinagar in 2000 by Asaf Ali and textile historian Jenny Housego, who met while Ali was still apprenticing under his uncle, learning how raw fleece becomes cloth worth passing down. Housego arrived with an art historian's grasp of pashmina's past; Ali brought a growing command of its making, describing the studio's work as embroidered and woven pashmina "with a contemporary touch." Ali's brothers Zahid and Hamid, along with Samina Zaidi, joined them, and together they built a studio rooted in Kashmir's own workshops rather than imposed on them from outside.
Above: Cashmere threads in a dye bath, slowly absorbing the rich colours. Below: Thread by thread, a pashmina is slowly handwoven.
Ali and Housego travelled to Ladakh early on to see the fibre spun and woven firsthand, a trip that shaped decades of work back home. In Srinagar, women hand-spin the pashmina on charka wheels; men weave it into cloth valued for a combination that shouldn't really be possible in one fibre, strength paired with extraordinary softness. That division of labour has held family workshops together across the valley for generations, and it still structures how Kashmir Loom operates. The cloth itself takes one of several traditional structures, twill, diamond (known locally as chasm-e-bulbul, "eye of the nightingale," one diagonal square set inside another) or herringbone, each demanding its own discipline at the loom.
Above: Weavers seated at the loom, guiding threads through the intricacies of a shawl design. Below: Floral motifs, hand stitched into the finely woven cloth.
Two techniques define the studio's finest pieces. Kani weaving uses small wooden bobbins instead of a shuttle, building patterned cloth thread by thread until a single shawl can take months, sometimes years, to finish. Sozni embroidery works in the opposite direction, stitching floral motifs so fine they read as woven into the fabric rather than sewn onto it. Kashmir Loom has also pushed the tradition forward, developing dorukha shawls woven with metal yarn that shift colour depending on which side catches the light, and expanding into throws, blankets and chogas lined with bandhani or ajrakh.
Above: Kani Ghulabdar Buta Jamawar Indigo Pink Shawl. Below: Kani Hafiz Butidar Antique Emerald Shawl
A shawl's life doesn't end at the loom. Kashmir's rafoogars, the region's traditional darners, have spent centuries mending torn or moth-eaten pashmina so invisibly that even the weave structure is rebuilt thread for thread, tear and repair alike vanishing from sight. It's a craft Ali calls a living heritage in its own right, and it sits close to Kashmir Loom's own instincts: nothing here is disposable, everything is worth the time it takes to save.
Ali keeps a library of old pashminas and historic textile references close by, returning often to museum collections and folding what he finds there into new designs. Every piece, in the end, is a meeting point: Ladakh's mountains and Srinagar's workshops, centuries of trade and a design still being written.
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Further Information:
Discover more from Kashmir Loom at the Selvedge Artisan Goods shop.
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Image Credits:
Lead: Kani Kanikar Natural Multi Shawl. Woven from pure cashmere using the historic Kani technique, this shawl features flowing, curvilinear motifs that move gracefully across the cloth.
All further images as credited in captions.