Add Or 1660-1745

Add.Or.1660-1745

86 drawings bound into a volume depicting trades and occupations in Kashmir. Craftsmen are shown at work with their implements and equipment.

By a Kashmir artist, probably at Srinagar, c.1850-60.

Inscribed on label on cover: ‘Book contains illustrations of the various traders in Kashmir with their respective implements and the corresponding accounts of processes of manufacture.’

Drawings inscribed in Persian characters with titles and names of implements and equipment, and sometimes with a brief description of the trade.

Gouache; size of volume and drawings 13.5 by 9.75 ins. Borders of black, red and yellow rules.

Acquired 27 June 1904.

Note: John Irwin in his monograph, ‘Shawls’ (London, 1955) assumes that the present volume was part of the William Moorcroft collection and believes the handwriting on the label to be Moorcroft’s. He therefore dates these paintings c.1823. The drawings were, however, acquired by the Library quite separately from the Moorcroft papers and a comparison of the handwriting with that of Moorcroft shows that they are by different hands. Moreover, the printing on the label belongs to the mid-19th century and the costume of the Europeans, as well as the inscription referring to the ‘Commissioner Sahib’, suggests a date of not earlier than 1850. It was not until after the Second Anglo-Sikh War of 1848 to 1849 that the British began to go to Kashmir in any numbers and Kashmir artists began to paint pictures especially for the British.

Owing to its Persian inscriptions, the book was numbered and foliated by the Library in the manner of a Persian manuscript. The drawings, however, are arranged from front to back in the European manner (see the series illustrating the cultivation of paddy and shawl weaving); f.86 (Add.Or.1745) is thus in fact the first drawing in the book and f.1 (Add.Or.1660) the last,

The volume was originally bound in red cloth with the label on the cover. It has since been rebound with the label pasted inside.