In a welcome shift toward material and global perspectives in art history, textiles have been increasingly recognized for their profound historical and cultural importance. In this context, a moon shawl in The Metropolitan Museum of Art (MMA) presents an opportunity to investigate the change in global demand for luxury goods, local tastes in court fashions, and the sociopolitical power of textiles (figs. 1, 2a-d).(1) Composed of fragments from four distinct Kashmiri shawls, the moon shawl encapsulates the rich intermingling of production practices in the Kashmir Valley, the Himalayas, with Western European and West Asian consumption during the nineteenth century. This article consults textiles and portraits alongside written sources such as Iranian newspapers and European travel accounts to challenge prevalent narratives.
