There is a poetic tell tale about the nexus of shawl craftsmanship in in Punjab and Kashmir. The Shawl Industry in Amritsar dates back more than 200 years, to the reign of Maharaja Ranjit Singh.
It wove itself, quite literally, into the fabric of that time - shawls, to be exact. Historians of the Kashmiri Shawl have found depictions of Maharaja Ranjit Singh's funeral bier on antique shawls dating to the mid-19th century.
The art of the Kashmir shawl, which reached new heights under the patronage of Ranjit Singh, of punjab always involved more than just fancy cloth.
When the Sikhs rose to power in Kashmir, Maharaja Ranjit Singh's love of art and of having his courtiers dressed up to the nines made the shawls a staple of the court. One Russian visitor described the scene this way: "the tents were doubled with Kashmir shawls ... we only walked on Kashmir shawls and while sitting down, I perceived that all the alleys, ceilings and streets - as far as the eye could encompass - were covered thusly of superb shawls; even the horses were prancing on them".
