In the style of Marina Sofia’s Friday Fun Reading Women post, I have collected images of women in paintings wearing paisley pattern shawls. These shawls became popular in the nineteenth century when mass production of the design (which originated in Kashmir) started in Norwich and then Paisley in Scotland. Thus paisley shawls became an exotic, must-have garment that became a marker of respectability. Although popular in Britain, the shawls were widely available in Europe, too.
Paisley Shawl by Robert Lewis Reid (1862-1929)
Sunday Afternoon by George Morren (1868-1941)
Portrait of a Young Lady by Eduard Friedrich Leybold (1798-1879)
Irish colleen wearing green plaid shawl (1890)
Will you go out with me Fido? by Alfred Stevens (1823-1906)
If these images have pricked your curiosity about the place of paisley pattern in the arts, why not read the story in my collection Paisley Shirt which was inspired by this design?
the writer is a lonely hunter 