Kani Weaving
Kani: A Pattern Woven Thread by Thread.
The weave our house is named after, and the most demanding way to make a Pashmina shawl.
What Is Kani?
The Pattern Is the Weave.
Kani is a hand-weaving technique from Kashmir. Unlike embroidery, every motif is formed during weaving itself: colour passes through the warp on dozens of small wooden bobbins, called kanis, so the pattern and the cloth are made together.
I
Origins
Kani weaving grew in Kashmir from the 15th century and reached its height in the Mughal period, when garden imagery from Persian art met the skill of the valley’s weavers.
II
The Talim
A talim is a written colour code that turns the designer’s drawing into instructions for the weaver, line by line across the width of the cloth.
III
The Kani
Small wooden bobbins, each carrying its own colour, move through selected warp threads. Their name came to describe the entire tradition.
IV
The Pattern
The best-known Kani motif is the boteh — the teardrop shape known abroad as paisley — set among cypress, iris and climbing vines.
V
The Time
A weaver may complete only a few centimetres of a dense pattern in a day. A large, fully patterned shawl can take many months, sometimes more than a year.
Colour
A Garden in Thread.
Kani colours were once drawn from minerals, flowers, bark and leaves. Fine pieces still keep that earthy balance: saffron beside moss green, madder red beside walnut, ivory beside indigo.
Hand or Machine?
How to Recognise Hand-Woven Kani.
Machine-made “Kani-style” shawls are common. These signs point to the real thing.
01
The reverse
On hand-woven Kani, the back shows where each coloured weft thread turns back at the edge of its motif. Machine jacquard looks evenly mechanical, often with long floating threads.
02
Small irregularities
A motif repeated across a hand-woven shawl varies very slightly each time. Perfect sameness suggests a machine.
03
Weight and price
Genuine Kani is woven in pure Pashmina and takes months. A large, densely patterned shawl offered cheaply is not hand-woven Kani.
04
GI certification
Kani shawls are a registered Geographical Indication. We arrange GI certification for our Kani pieces on request.
The design does not rest upon the cloth. It is the cloth.
Our Kani
Woven on Our Looms and by Weavers We Trust.
Our Kani shawls, stoles and wraps are 100% pure Pashmina. For each piece we state its size and describe how it was made, and you can see Kani being woven on a visit to our looms in Srinagar.