William Sloane arrived in America as an emigrant from a Scottish town famous for weaving carpets and rugs. In 1843, William Sloane along with his younger brother John W. Sloane went on to form a company called W.& J. Sloane, importing rugs and carpets into America and changing the way the rich and famous decorated their homes in that country.
In 1876 at Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, William Sloane noticed that the most popular attractions was the Oriental rugs. He bought the entire collection for a millions dollars and then displayed them at his New York store where it is said they sold ‘like lollipop’. The average price was $10,000 with one Persian masterpiece even selling for $75,000. This was the first time in America that a retail house was selling Oriental Rugs. Looking at this success, soon others jumped into the market but Sloane was still at the top of the game.
In 1882, to maintain his lead, Sloane’s got in touch with a rug manufacturer in Amritsar offering to buy their entire output. The deal was done and Sloane’s was the become only American retail store with its own Oriental rug manufacturer.
The manufacturer was Khan Bahadur Shaikh Gulam Hussun & Company. Shaikh Gulam Hussun’s Great-grandfather was a Kashmiri migrant shawl weaver, who probably arrived in Punjab at a time when Shawls were in much demand in Europe. But that business died with the end of Franco-Prussian war. Now, the American’s it seemed had arrived just in time. Shaikh Gulam Hussun & Company had left the shawl business and moved to carpets in around 1880. While weaving was done in Amritsar, they got material from Kashmir where they maintained another workshop.
It was a mutually beneficial agreement for both the parties. Sloane’s could now give their designs and requirements for rugs tailored for American taste and yet retain Oriental touch as was manufactured in India.
But this design and requirement transferring was easier said than done. The method employed was ingenious but laborious. A design once approved was traced on a huge sheet of graph paper, each square representing a knot in wool. The minute specifications and texture design were appended to the sheet and sent off to Amritsar. In Amritsar, the master weaver, the only one who could read the instructions duly translated in Urdu and intone them to the other workers. It was a painful process, considering that an average rug was 12 x 15 foot and had 3,500,000 hand tied knots, a process that took three to four years.
This business partnership lasted right until 1948. Then India became Independent, Pakistan arrived and like many other threads, this thread too got severed. Violence engulfed the areas around the newly created borders. Shaikh Gulam Hussun found himself in middle of it all.
On April 8, 1947, Shaikh cabled Sloane’s:
“Thank god we and Swadeshi (a subsidiary wool spinning plant) escaped damage. If no further trouble hope dispatching from Amritsar fifty per cent more yardage than last year.”
The people caught in conflict were yet to grasp the scope of this violence. They were yet to understand how deep the cuts are going to be and how long will the bleeding go on.
Violence soon caught up with Shaikh’s optimism.
In October Shaikh reported pillaging of Amritsar, the burning and looting of his home and factory. The machinery that survived was requisitioned by the East Punjab Government.
Then in 1948, India and Pakistan had their first war over Kashmir. Shaikh’s luck was finally out, but still he clung to a hope.
“Owning to various difficulties,” wrote Shaikh with amazing stolidity in January, 1948, “we do not think we will be able to resume out business as quickly as anticipated for now we are cut off from Kashmere. The rumour was that our factory has been confiscated over there.”
That was the end of the story for Khan Bahadur Shaikh Gulam Hussun & Company. Sloane, on the other hand now started sourcing their material directly from Kashmir.
In ‘The story of Sloane’s’ published by W.& J. Sloane Firm in 1950, we read:
“Thus was this friendly personal and commercial tie finally broken. Some day, it is hoped, Shaikh may re-establish his enterprises in Amritsar; but this is doubtful as all the Mohammedans, who were the weavers, have fled. the remaining Hindus do not weave. Sloane’s is now receiving its hand-woven rugs from Syrinagar, in Kashmere.”
Young hands at Shaikh Gulam Hussun’s factory, Amritsar. 1915.
Photograph: ‘The Bombay Presidency, the United Provinces, the Punabb, Kashmir, Sind, Rajputana and Central India: Their History, People, Commerce and Natural Resources’ (1920) by Somerset Playne
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“How they frighten birds in Kashmir by means of a cracker made of plaited strips of bush ten feet long” ~ ‘Indian Memories: Recollections of Soldiering Sport, Etc.’ (1915) by Sir Robert Baden-Powell, father of Scout Movement.
“I was in Kashmir. One evening, I sat by the River Jhelum. There was stillness all around. I felt I was sitting besides the Padma. Of course, when I lived on the Padma I was a young man, now I am old. Yet that difference seemed to have been wiped out by some link transcending time. A flock of geese flew over my head across Jhelum…I seemed to hear some ineffable call, and be led by its impulse to some far journey.” (Kshitimohan Sen, Balaka-Kabya-Parikrama,p.55)
Balaka
A Flight of Swans
The curving stream of the Jhelum glimmering in the glow of evening
merged into the dark like a bend sword in a sheath;
at the day’s ebb the night-tide
appeared with the star-flowers floating on the dark waters;
at the foot of the dark mountains were rows of deodar trees;
as if Creation, unable to speak clearly, sought to reveal its message in dream,
only heaps of inarticulate sounds rose groaning in the dark.
Suddenly I heard at that moment in the evening sky
the flash of sound rushing instantly far and farther in the plain of emptiness.
O flying swans
Storm-intoxicated are your wings
the loud laughter of immeasurable joy awakened wonder
which continued to dance in the sky.
The sounds of those wings,
the sounding heavenly nymphs
vanished after breaking the quiet of meditation.
The mountains, engulfed in darkness, shuddered,
shuddered the forest of deodar.
As if the message of those wings
brought for a moment the urge for movement
in the heart of ecstatic stillness.
The mountains desired to be roaming clouds of April,
the rows of trees spreading their wings,
desirous of severing the fetters of earth, were lost in a trice,
while in search of the end of the sky following that trail of sound.
The dream of this evening is shattered.
The waves of agony rise.
There is longing for the far,
O roaming wings.
In the heart of the universe is heard the agonized cry,
‘Not here, not here, but somewhere else!’
O flying swans,
tonight you have opened to me the covers of stillness.
under this quiet I hear
in air, water and land
those sounds of the undaunted and restless wings.
The heaps of grass are flapping their wings in the sky of the earth;
in some dark obscure corner of the earth
millions of sprouting swans of seeds are flapping their wings.
Today I see these mountains, these forests fly freely
from one island to another, from the unknown to the more unknown.
In the beating of the wings of the stars
the darkness starts crying for the light.
I hear the myriad voices of men flying in different groups to
unknown regions
from the shadowy past to the hazy and distant new age.
In my heart I heard the flight of the nest-free bird with innumerable
others
through day and night, through light and darkness
from one unknown shore to some other unknown shore.
The wings of the empty universe resound with this song –
‘Not here, but somewhere, somewhere, somewhere beyond!’
Translated by Bhupendranath Seal (Modern Indian Literature, an Anthology, Volume 3)
“It is becoming easier for me to feel that it is I who bloom in flowers, spread in the grass, flow in the water, scintillate in the stars, live in the lives of men of all ages.
When I sit in the morning outside on the deck of my boat,before the majestic purple of the mountains, crowned with the morning light. I know that I am eternal, that I am anado-rupam, My true form is not that of flesh or blood, but of joy. In the world where we habitually live, the self is so predominant that everything in it is of our own making and we starve because we have to feed ourselves. To know truth is to become true, there is no other way. When we live in the self, it is not possible for us to realize truth.
[…] My coming to Kashmir has helped me to know clearly what I want. It is likely that it will become obscured again when I go back to my usual routine; but these occasional detachments of life from the usual round of customary thoughts and occupations lead to the final freedom – the Santan, Sivam, Advaitam.”
~ extracts from a letter written by Rabindranath Tagore in Srinagar, Kashmir on October 12th, 1915. [A Miscellany by Rabindranath Tagore]
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Musicians and Dancing girls (figure on left, in foreground, looks more like Bacha).
A Domestic Rice Mill: The charm of Kashmir is that it is distinctively itself. A walk through the bazaars, the huts and factories presents a living panorama of the India of the imagination. Here are to be seen the flashing colors, the turbaned heads and the picturesque groups of the populace at work and at play.
[Update: Photographer James Ricalton, 1903]
The Srinagar Club, always the scene of life and gaiety, has an ideal setting in the shade of a magnificent chenar grove on the mirrored waters of the Jhelum with the Takhat as a background.
Nishat Bagh
Temple of Pandrathan, when the tank was dry.
Plowing
Poplar Avenue. [Update: Photographer James Ricalton, 1903]
Rest house at Chakoti
Rest-house at Domel
Seventh Bridge or Saffa Kadal
Shankaracharya
Sher Garhi Temple. On right side of the image can be seen the dome of Gadhadhar Temple or Shri Sanatan Dharam Sabha. [Details of the temple here]
Shisha Nag Glacier
No one in Kashmir is in hurry. What isn’t done today will certainly be done tomorrow. But tomorrow is very slow in arriving.
Third Bridge on Jehlum, Fateh Kadal
The suspension bridge at Uri
View from Shankaracharya hill
Human Welcome. ‘While many think that the present rulers of India only play at royalty, that their thrones are but pleasing conceits and their scepters empty baubles allowed to them by an indulgent overlord, the Maharaja of Kashmir is a free agent in all material things and the allegiance of the populace to him is very real.’
That note makes this image all the more ironic.
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