Motif from Kashmir Shawl: Pheerozee (Turquoise Color), No. 23, By Order of Mahummud Azeem Khan

One of group of eight textile designs made in Kashmir and sent to England in 1823 by British trader, William Moorcroft for use in the shawl making industry. These textile designs are the only surviving from a group of 34 drawings he sent, as part of his personal interesr in making British shawls supreme over all competitors. They are all painted on paper in brilliant colored gouache and varnished. Each shows a large stylized Paisley "cone" set in a field and are signed on the verso "William Moorcroft, Kashmeer, 1823", numbered, inscribed with the color of the ground in Kashmiri vernacular, and, on all but two, with the name and country of the person who commissioned the original shawl. In England, they would have been translated to graph paper to create mise-en-cartes for the guidance of a weaver.

This design, titled "Pherosee [turquoise color]", contains a large paisley "cone", decorated in the lower part a bundle of stylized leaves colored with shades of red and green, from which emerges a bundle of long, thin, indulating branches with stylized leaves rendered with yellow, red and black. A green outline separates the cone from a floral pattern with interlacing garlands of green leaves and tiny stylized flowers and rosettes colored with shades of red, purple and yellow, that makes the background.