NEW DELHIhas a sense of the human hand. “The region is rife with craft
skills, so my years in India obviously attracted me to weav-
ing in Kashmir and the fine gossamer yarn of Pashmina. But
while we embraced the age-old techniques, we also chal-
lenged our weaving community to innovate and experiment
with new ideas.”
While Housego couldn’t possess the original, she real-
ized she could re-create the shawl. She determined that
the best process was Kani weaving, a historical and highly
complex technique that achieves tremendous detail by
using the finest twill tapestry. The project was extremely
challenging. “The whole process took about three years
just for our first piece to be ready,” Housego explains. “The
first was so beautiful that we were all just amazed—its
sublime beauty made us forget the time and hard work
it took to get there.” The Kashmir Loom version of Sar-
gent’s shawl is an oversize object, four feet wide and more
than nine feet long. It is featherlight, in colors softer and
brighter than the original: Around the central panel of
ivory, the paisley border is in blue, rose, and green. “We
continue to make these only with the master weaver who
created the first piece,” she says. “Hence, we have made
only a few.”
The first went to Jan Adelson, the dealer’s wife. Asaf Ali
brought the shawl to New York just in time for an exhibition
that was being held at Adelson’s gallery in 2006. “For the
opening, I wore a plain navy suit,” Jan remembers, “so that
the entire focus was the shawl.”
Last year, one of the re-created shawls was included in
a show at the Museum of Modern Art, “Items: Is Fashion
Modern?” The first fashion exhibition at the museum since
1944, it contained 111 objects, including such iconic designs
as a 1926 little black dress by Chanel, a 1974 pair of stage
platform boots worn by Elton John, and a 1970s stainless
steel Datejust watch by Rolex. Three pieces by Kashmir
Loom—including the Sargent model—were chosen to rep-
resent the Kashmiri shawl, with Paola Antonelli, senior
curator of architecture and design at MoMA, visiting the
workshops in India to make her selections.
Nearly 18 years since Housego first saw the shawl in
that dark flat, the original object continues its storied exis-
tence 7,600 miles away. Housego, now 75, suffered a stroke
recently and has returned to New Delhi. Lord Cholmonde-
ley has decided to lend the shawl to a pair of major exhi-
bitions in the works that will explore Sargent and fashion,
first at the Tate Britain, then at the Museum of Fine Arts in
Boston. Warren Adelson hopes that the piece might find a
permanent home in the United States, much to the chagrin
of Housego. “It would be wonderful if it went to the MFA in
Boston,” Adelson says. “The Sargent archives are there, in
addition to so many Sargents.”
Jenny Housego admits to the bittersweet nature of the
undertaking, creating a reproduction of an object—a fam-
ily heirloom—that she can never actually possess. Yet she
could not be more pleased with the result. “Every time
I look at the shawl, I am grateful for the unwavering support
of the weavers,” she says. “And I feel a sense of pride when
I see someone wearing our Sargent shawl—that I was
able to produce something similar to a design that my
great-uncle used to admire so much.” ◾ABOVE:
English-born
and India-based
textile expert
Jenny Housego,
Sargent’s great-niece.
LEFT: Houghton Hall’s
former owner, Sybil
Cholmondeley (in a
portrait by Sargent),
came into possession
of the original shawl.Sargent
painted his
niece Reine
Ormond
wearing
the shawl
in seven
poses
for his
circa-1908
Cashmere.was most exciting for me to be able to see it, knowing that
Sargent himself draped this shawl around my aunt.”
Hirshler, who later saw the original shawl at Houghton
Hall with a textile curator from the MFA and a colleague
from the Tate Britain in London, was also struck by its con-
nection to the artist’s subjects. “I can’t tell you how thrill-
ing it was to pull it from its casing,” she remembers. “It is
always amazing to see a tangible thing. All the people are
now gone, so the clothes, props, or jewelry make the works
of art come alive in a remarkable way.”
Armed with her exposure to the original and images of
other Sargent paintings with the shawl, Housego headed
back to India. After founding Kashmir Loom with Kashmiri
textile enthusiast Asaf Ali, she started spending time in the
region. “Asaf, his two brothers, and their families lived in
Kashmir, and I often went to visit them and stayed with
them,” Housego recalls. “The beauty of the valley, its lakes
with mountains rising out of them, and all the exotic gar-
dens are breathtaking.”
The goal with the Kashmir Loom venture has been to
build on the area’s ancient techniques to produce work that