Suchitra will put our shawls in spotlight
craig.ritchie@trinitymirror.com
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The unique history of Paisley shawls and their local and global connections are to be investigated by a talented academic.
Independent scholar Suchitra Choudhury has been awarded a Visiting Research Fellowship by the University of Glasgow Library.
This will allow Ms Choudhury to consult rare books and documents, and in particular, the Library’s Special Collections and Business Archives.
She is currently completing a monograph on Cashmere and Paisley Shawls in British Literature and Culture, as well as working on an invited curation of Paisley Shawls in Literature for permanent display at Paisley Museum.
Ms Choudhury said: “I am very grateful to The William Lind Foundation and The University of Glasgow Library for awarding a Visiting Research Fellowship.
“The opportunity will allow me to consult rare books and documents on nineteenthcentury India, and to make an innovative connection between the history of English literature and the textiles manufactured and inspired by the subcontinent.
“In particular, the Special Collections and the Business Archives will offer a huge opportunity for me to investigate the unique history of Paisley shawls and their local and global connections.”
Ms Choudhury specialises in English literature associated with India and the way in which they relate to material culture, especially textiles.
She has given talks on the subject in the Victoria and Albert Museums, the National Museum of Scotland, Hawick
Museum, and Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery at the uni.
Her research has shown that between 1770 and roughly 1900, a vast number of ‘cashmere shawls’ from India were imported into Britain.
These shawls were expensive.
However, women of lesser means were happy to purchase the copies, or the British ‘ imitations’ manufactured in Paisley, Edinburgh and Norwich, which came to be widely known as ‘Paisley’ shawls.
“Drawing upon a variety of sources, my research locates the presence and evolution of shawls in imaginat i v e texts and f i c t i o n ,” Ms C h o u d hu r y , pictured left, said: “Its central assertion is that while cashmere and Paisley shawls were popular dress accessories, their significance was not limited to fashion alone.
“Rather, as visible symbols of British dominion in India, for many writers and artists, they functioned as a site to reflect social and imperial concerns.
“This is manifest in the works of bestselling authors such as Walter Scott, Charles Dickens and William Thackeray.
“Equally, I also show how many familiar and much-loved paintings, in fact, used the shawl to foreground contemporary events and accounts of the empire. At the centre of this study lies the cultural prominence of Indian and Paisley shawls and the way in which they provided a bridge between the east and the west.”