ethnic wool shawl

Kullu Shawl

Background:

Kullu is the capital town of the Kullu District in Himachal Pradesh. It is located on the banks of the Beas River in the Kullu Valley about ten kilometres north of the airport at Bhuntar. This valley is famous for its temples, beauty and its majestic hills covered with pine and deodar forest and sprawling apple orchards and hand woven textiles especially stole, shawl, muffler and tweed. The design is inspired from the engraving on wall of temples and Buddhist monasteries.

Material used:

The material used for their weaving is pure wool of counts ranging from 2/32 Nm to 2/64 Nm in warp and weft.

For designing, pure wool is used in extra weft. Bright colours are used generally to give an attractive look.

Technique applied:

Kullu shawl is woven by tapestry technique of weaving, in which design is created by using different coloured weft yarn of short lengths as per contour of the design. No extra thread is manipulated in its design. It is very time consuming and requires high skill. In this technique the design is first developed on graph paper and then it is woven on ordinary fly shuttle frame loom.

How to distinguish genuine Kullu shawl:

• Designs are developed with different coloured weft threads of short length.
• No countinous thread from one end to other is used in design area.
• Basic fabric has diagonal twill lines.
• Kullu shawl is famous for its intricate multi-colour strong geometrical pattern woven with woollen yarns.