I was so excited to find these beautiful Pashmina scarves, Pashmina by Sadhu. Subharata Sadhu is a textile designer based in New Dehli, India who believes in humane design by sustaining and nurturing traditional craft techniques of hand-spun and hand-woven Pashmina.
There is NO machine process or machine spinning of cashmere with his pieces. This machine processing is threatening the sustenance of the traditional craft which has provided a regular livelihood opportunity for artisan families. Rather, each of Subharata's pieces are woven with the purest and finest cashmere yarn which is carefully hand-spun from the down fleece of mountain goats.
These fine yarns create the most light and air-y shawls and scarves, they are the softest cashmere from high altitude goats. These pieces are so fine that one of the large shawls can fit into this wine glass! This shows it's fine quality and even when I took it out, it was un-rumpled and perfectly beautiful. This yarn has a luster due to its long, fine fibers, which are as thin as 12 microns. In comparison a human hair is approx. 200 microns.
The very fine Pashm (the Persian word for 'wool') comes from Western Tibet in Changtang where nomadic herders known as Drokba tend flocks high plains. They collect the fleece by combing the goats in late spring, before they molt to avoid breakage of fibers. No chemicals are used in any process of cleaning or carding the yarn, this way it retains the inherent softness and character of the fiber.
The art of Pashmina weaving is almost 2,000 years old and the Kashmiri artisans have perfected the art of hand spinning fine pashmina yarn. Nowadays many cheap imitations of Pashmina are available in the market which has denigrated the word Pashmina and the traditional weavers of Kashmir are suffering because of unfair competition from machine woven cashmere products woven with machine spun cashmere yarn.
Mr. Sadhu began this project to create a sustainable livelihood for the artisans of Kashmir. He aims to showcase pure Pashmina, it will take a bit of education but the truth is in wearing one of his pieces, NOTHING can feel as good as one of his natural Pashmina shawls or scarves.
shop Pashmina by Sadhu at Nonchalant Mom here
