Paisley: A Brief History

by Patricia L. Cummings

Persia is credited as being the first country known to have created boteh designs that have since come to be known as paisley motifs. Boteh is an anglicized version of the Hindi word, buta, which means “flower.” These stylistic shapes were incorporated onto the surface of fabrics that originated during the Safavid Dynasty of Persia (1501-1736). Later, the design was quite popular with Iranian weavers during the Qajar Dynasty (1795-1925). Paisleys made a comeback in the 1960s, and most especially, in the 1990s when they were utilized in wallpaper, ties, and other wearing apparel. In earlier times, Kashmiri (paisley) shawls were given as part of a dowry, or for a ceremonial occasion.

Paisley cloth - reproduction fabric

Reproduction fabric, cotton. photo by James Cummings

The New Oxford American Dictionary, page 1229, provides the following definition of the word:

paisley – a distinctive intricate pattern of curved, feather-shaped figures based on a pine cone design from India. ORIGIN – early 19^th cent., named after town of Paisley, Scotland, the original place of manufacture.

Paisley Motif Has Roots in Shawl Making

The patterned shawls with paisley motifs were woven in Kashmir, a fertile valley in the Himalayas, since about the seventeenth century, according to Susan Meller in the book, Russian Textiles: Printed Cloth for the Bazaars of Central Asia (New York: Abrams, 2007). Members of the British Army served in India in the second Anglo-Sikh War (1848-1849) that established British control via an annexation of much of the Punjab. The soldiers brought home Kashmiri (cashmere) shawls and as a result, the popularity of paisley designs soared and lasted for approximately one hundred years, not falling out of favor in Europe until the beginning of the 1870s.

Hand loomed and hand woven goat hair was originally used to make paisley textiles. The weavers used a twill pattern in which the warp was alternately wrapped, creating an uneven surface. The natural fiber used was collected wool called shah tus, or King's wool. Wild mountain goats rubbed the excess wool off, onto bushes in the spring. That soft fleece was highly prized and was saved to create just the highest priced shawls. Kashmiri shawls were more valuable than "Pashmina” shawls. The word “Pashmina” refers to shawls made from the fleece of domesticated goats which was more coarse.

Paisley in beige

100% cotton fabric with paisley design. photo by James Cummings

Fashion Trends Lead to More Production

Originally, the paisley shawls were traded through north India and Central Asia but eventually, they were marketed in Europe. The book, Textiles, 5,000 years, edited by Jennifer Harris, (Harry N. Abrams, Publisher, 1993), pages 108-109 show a one and a half page photo of a mid-nineteenth century, woven Kashmiri shawl with boteh (paisley) motifs. The caption for the picture notes that during that period, Indian weavers were forced to compete with Jacquard-loom woven shawls from Paisley, Scotland. By mid-nineteenth century, Kashmiri weavers were struggling to keep up with the demand for the “hot” fashion accessories. Embroidering a combination of floral and boteh designs onto plain shawl cloth, to completely fill the area, served the Kashmiri weavers well, as a way to maximize production in the 1860s.

The Jacquard loom, invented in 1801, but not heavily used in Scotland until circa 1850, was employed to produce what came to be called “paisley” fabrics. The name is derived from the first site of industrialized manufacture of Kashmiri knock-off shawls, Paisley, Scotland. However, Paisley was soon joined by both Glasgow and Edinburgh in this endeavor. Between 1850 and 1860, during the time of its greatest popularity, the fabric was known as the “Paisley Pine,” according to A History of Printed Textiles.

Paisley Red Bandanna

Portion of a red, paisley bandanna. photo by James Cummings

History of the Boteh Motif

The Indian pine cone connection sounded very interesting and I was happy to find more information about that in Textiles, 5,000 years which states “the 'drooping bud' typical of Indian design has become the curling tip of the motif widely known in Europe as the 'Kashmir cone'.” The design is also referred to as a “seed pod unit” in A History of Printed Textiles by Stuart Robinson (Massachusetts:The M.I.T. Press, 1969), page 115.

In Russia, the paisley design took on more the shape of a cucumber according to Susan Meller, page 43. She shows six examples of block-printed paisley fabrics from the last third of the nineteenth century and they are quite distinctive. Over time, the boteh designs became less isolated in border strips and more integrated with other fill-in, floral designs.

Shawls of paisley design were popular from around 1780 to the 1870s. The distinctive boteh design motif of paisley fabrics was first created by applying a wax resist to fabric with a wooden block, according to World Textiles, (Boston, New York, London: A Bulfinch Press Book, Little Brown and Company, 1999), page 136. That would have been labor-intensive work, as was any early block printing endeavor. Of course, modern printing methods are far different on a commercial scale today.

In “Beyond the Fringe: Shawls of Paisley Design,” an online article, Meg Andrews notes a few other countries where shawls were produced. She names Austria, England, France, Russia, and the United States, in addition to country origins already mentioned here. If information found in an eBay auction is to be believed, the Netherlands was also among the countries that produced paisley shawls.

Reasons for the Demise of Shawl Making

According to Meg Andrews, several factors led to the demise of shawl making was the Franco-Prussian War of the early 1870s that completely stopped export from Kashmir to France. Another factor was that when the price of shawls dropped to the point that anyone could afford to buy one, they lost their desirability. To see some great photos and to read Meg's article in its entirety, please visit: http://www.victoriana.com/library/paisley/shawl.html.

Paisley Fabrics

One fabric manufacturer of paisley fabric, in the northeastern United States, was the Cocheco Mills of Dover, New Hampshire. The Cocheco Mills were originally founded by John Williams and Isaac Wendell in 1812, as the Dover Cotton Factory. Hurt by the Great Depression, the mills closed their doors for a final time in 1937. This mill may have been encouraged to create Oriental and other foreign-style prints based on the recommendations of the 1856 book by Owen Jones,' Grammar of Ornament, as was noted in Just New From the Mills: Printed Cottons in America, Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, from the collection of the American Textile History Museum (1987/1997).

Two examples of paisley fabric printed by the Cocheco Mills are shown on page 67. On the facing page, Diane Fagan Affleck states that “paisley maintained its status as a standard pattern among many print manufacturers.” She also notes that Indian-inspired designs seem to look best when rendered in the rich, deep hues of “madder-style colors.” Nonetheless, a lighter, celadon color, antique shawl that was offered on eBay is stunning. Some paisley shawls are large enough to entirely cover a small couch or loveseat. In early textiles, some of the boteh designs have mutated from being a small size that more resembled a “cone,” to being a very long, cylindrical shape.

Paisley in corduroy

Paisley in corduroy. photo by James Cummings

Other Resemblances Mentioned

The boteh design could symbolize a shoot of a date palm, a plant that is characterized as the 'Tree of Life' because it can provide all the basic necessities for survival: food, drink, and shelter. The site http://tinyurl.com/2o9ygh explains that the boteh shape calls to mind a vegetal motif, or an Indian bodhi leaf, or a mango tree leaf.

The shape strikes some similarity to the Turkish tughra Calligraphic seal that was affixed by an Ottoman sultan to any official document or correspondence. Istanbul, Turkey was the center of the Ottoman Empire that lasted for approximately five hundred years. Curiously, in the book, Flowers of Silk & Gold: Four Centuries of Ottoman Embroidery by Sumru Belger Krody Merrell in association with The Textile Museum, Washington, D.C., 2000), there is only one visual image in which the leaves are so highly stylized that they resemble a paisley or boteh motif, on page 147.

One source mentions that the paisley design looks like the left half of the two part Cha'i symbol. Wikipedia shares the idea that “some scholars believe it is the convergence of a stylized floral spray and a Cypress tree – a Zoroastrian symbol of death and eternity.” The Zoroastrian religion was found by Zoroaster in the 6th century B.C. and it consists of a monotheistic, pre-Islamic, belief system of Persia. During the Sassanid dynasty (226-650 A.D.), Zoroastrianism spread to Afghanistan and the Indus Valley. The religion focused on absolute theological concepts of “good and evil,” “spirit and flesh,” “light and dark,” and “heaven and hell,” according to the book, Embroidered Textiles: Traditional Patterns from Five Continents, by Sheila Paine (London: Thames and Hudson, 1990), and subsequently, influenced other religions.

Paisley Prints Today

To summarize, paisley designs were created, historically, either by weaving, printing, or embroidering. If we were to consider “fabric trends,” we would have to say that it appears that paisley prints are again enjoying a renaissance. A quick look at Hancock's of Paducah's print catalog revealed quite a few choices of paisley fabrics. Today, paisley designs are featured on upholstery and drapery fabrics, silk cloth, wool wovens, and dress and blouse weight cottons, as well as cotton bandannas. Some of the paisley home decorator fabrics and some poly-cotton fabrics are treated with Scotchguard™, and often need to be dry-cleaned. The chemical perfluorobutane sulfonate is applied to fabrics to help them to resist stains and soiling.

Glancing at my own fabric collection, I can find only four paisleys in the mix. One is a Jinny Beyer prints, one is a from the Spice Route Collection fabrics designed by Karen Jarrar for Marcus Brothers, Inc., and two are of unknown origin, purchased as fat quarters. I remember how popular paisleys were in the 1960s/1970s. I even made a full-length Kaftan that had pockets and zipped up the front, using a uniquely-period, green fabric. Confirming that memory is a remark quoted in Robinson's book, page 51, that says:

In mid-1969, an attempt was made to switch the trend to 'the baroque, the tapestry and the Oriental, eye-filling, sinuously swirling designs, sometimes derived from nature, sometimes Paisley-with-a difference ...'

Botehs are elegant and have a long history, over many centuries. The decline of the paisley shawl industry is directly related to a glut on the market. A shawl that might have taken a Kashmiri artisan three years to make, only required one week, in the hands of a Scottish weaver. Quality diminished as more types of fibers were loomed and the price dropped to one tenth of the former prices asked, according to A History of Printed Textiles.

Today, antique examples may sell for a lot of money, if their condition is good to excellent. However, as in the time when the Kashmiri and Pashmina shawls were the height of fashion, they are still being produced commercially so the starting prices in online auctions are often very low. Perhaps, after reading this article (and after having researched it), both you and I will have a better appreciation of the word, “paisley.” The best part is that manufacturers are now honoring this long time tradition of paisley cloth making, and we do not have to wait to find antique examples of cloth for our quilts.