Bandanas: A Colonial History
- Jul 14
- 21 min read
In 2025, the Queer Ecology Hanky Project was exhibited at the Tang Teaching Art Museum at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, NY. This is a travelling exhibit with its inception at the White Page Gallery in Minneapolis, MN (2019).
Michael Warner, a literary critic once wrote that being queer means constantly challenging “the common understanding of what gender difference means, or what the state is for, or what 'health' entails ... or what a good relation to the planet's environment would be. Queers do a kind of practical social reflection just in finding ways of being queer."
And yet, when one speaks of Bandanas, its as if one has suffered selective amnesia. While these bandana discourses speak of worker rights, queer struggles and climate crises, you'll rarely find them talking about Colonization that made the bandanas available to Europeans and Americans... the very same bandanas that's painted in blood and labored upon by slaves.
So let's talk about Bandanas — no really. Let us have the whole conversation and not leave out the uncomfortable bits. For bandanas may represent Freedom and Equality for a select few, while simultaneously representing Death and Starvation for the People of the Global Majority.
Let's begin our journey with the name Bandana. It traces its origins to India to a word, bāndhnū (बांधनू) meaning to tie or bind the cloth. While your Encyclopædia Britannica's entry from 1911 claims that that word is from the language, Hindustani, might I remind my readers that Hindustani was a colonial import used to linguistically categorize native tongues under the British officials' dialect. Afterall, the Hindustani language is a blend of Hindi, Urdu, Sanskrit, Persian and English, and developed in British quarters like Fort William.
So, while bāndhnū is indeed the origins of the word Bandana, it is not from Hindustani but a word common to both Hindi and Urdu Dictionaries. Encyclopædia Britannica further goes on to explain that the word refers to a "primitive method of obtaining an effect in dyeing by tying up cloth in different places to prevent the particular parts from receiving the dye. The name was given to richly coloured silk handkerchiefs produced by this process, of which bright colours were characteristic. Bandanas are now commonly made of cotton and produced in Lancashire, whence they are exported. The effect is also produced by a regular process in calico printing, in which the pattern is made by discharging the colour."
Primitive Method? If it was so primitive then why were not just Britain but also the French, the Dutch, the Germans and the Portuguese involved in its trade? If it was so primitive, why was there an industrial espionage to steal a dye that would help mass-manufacture fabrics?
Produced in Lancashire? But of course. After all, not only were there plantations built, slavery rampant to produce the color the Empire demanded, but the designs were also stolen, rebranded and patented. But it was primitive right? And yet, it became a symbol for your liberation, your national identity, your freedom of expression.
There are two parts to this conversation. One involving the color and the dyeing technique and one involving the ornamentation/designs such as the Paisley [colonized term] print that was developed, or as we call it Boteh/Buta/Ambi/Kairi/Mankolam [in local languages]. Let's begin the journey with the colors and dyeing techniques. Here's how dyeing in the bandhani fashion would look like. It involves a cottage industry, aka a decentralized, home-based manufacturing network.
Natural & Synthetic Dyes
Natural dyes of that era were unreliable to the Industrial Europe's vision. Every batch of turmeric, saffron, pomegranate grind, may produce a dye that's slightly different. Moreover, they weren't colorfast, which meant they would fade over time upon washing. Further, it was expensive. This combination of shortfalls made the dye unreliable, prompting European chemists to experiment with synthetic dyes. August 26, 1856: William Henry Perkins of the Royal College of Chemistry, was instructed to find a synthetic form of Quinine. Quinine was used to treat malaria and was highly expensive. If a synthetic form could be found, it could be produced in abundance at a much lower cost, leading to more lives saved from the deadly disease.
And so, Perkins was experimenting Aniline (Phenylamine), a colorless, odorless oil derived from coal tar – which was also found in abundance. At some point, he oxidized Phenylamine with Potassium Dichromate and Sulphuric Acid to produce a color Mauveine that could dye the dresses purple.
Needless to say, this experiment catapulted European industrialists toward an era of piracy. Purple came first, soon followed by Red, Blue, Yellow and Green dyes. It was the red however, the bright cherry red that was the Pantone color for several decades. Every fabric manufacturer wanted red. It didn't matter if they had to pay exorbitant fees, steal trade secrets, kidnap dyers, as long as they got their dye there was no deed that was too shady.
Enter Turkey Red. This was a bright scarlet dye that was used to dye cotton. As the name suggests, it not only hails from Turkey but the dying process was a strongly guarded secret. In order to discover the secret process, textile firms in England and France began sending industrial spies to Turkey. The Europeans call it industrial espionage. Some of the honest ones may admit to piracy. Our grandmothers call it stealing and theft.
Turkey Red
In the 1800s, the English had tried their best to replicate bandanas. However, most of replications would result in the dye fading after a few washes. The original process of dyeing was complicated and time-consuming, often involving several steps to fixate the dye to the cloth. Moreover, their attempts failed to produce a dyed cloth that can be used to print the bandana designs onto it.
Prepared cotton fibers received successive steepings in lye, olive oil, alum, and dung in addition to several madder baths and aftertreatments. Production could take weeks. Furthermore, the process was not easily adapted to eighteenth-century European printing techniques, and use was limited to unwoven yarns and whole cloths.
The dyeing process for Turkey Red was complicated. It had about 17 steps and took 25 days to produce the color. However, it was colorfast, as in the color would not fade. Here's one of the recipes for you to understand its complexity.
Boil cotton in lye of Barilla or wood ash
Wash and dry
Steep in a liquor of Barilla ash or soda plus sheep’s dung and olive oil
Rinse, let stand 12 hours, dry
Repeat steps 3 and 4 three times.
Steep in a fresh liquor of Barilla ash or soda, sheep’s dung, olive oil and white argol (potassium tartrate).
Rinse and dry
Repeat steps 6 and 7 three times.
Treat with gall nut solution
Wash and dry
Repeat steps 9 and 10 once.
Treat with a solution of alum, or alum mixed with ashes and Saccharum Saturni (lead acetate).
Dry, wash, dry.
Madder once or twice with Turkey madder to which a little sheep’s blood is added.
Wash
Boil in a lye made of soda ash or the dung liquor
Wash and dry.
There were two ways by which the Europeans could obtain the color other than through trade:
Create synthetic dyes. Test the theories until you stumble upon the right formulation. Ensure they colorfast.
Steal the formula for Turkey Red and kidnap its experienced dyers.
I wonder which option they chose...
For the first half of the 18th century, espionages continued to fail, and Europe had to import red yarn from Turkey and red fabric from India. By 1747, the French had had enough. They began enticing dyers to leave and travel to France to teach them the dyeing process.
Essentially by 1740s, reproducing a Turkey Red implied a greater reputation for the chemists, dyers and manufacturers involved. Districts where cotton manufacturing was already underway, such as Manchester, Rouen and Mulhouse, saw a rise in the desire to replicate the color. It didn't matter if one employed spies, kidnapped dyers, as long as a Turkey Red was being produced, all activities leading up to its production would be labelled as necessary business investments.
Sun & Lion Brand was one such English merchant label distributing fabrics dyed by the Scottish and English firms. Not surprisingly, they decided to brand their fabrics as the "Genuine Turkey Red".
I came across this note dated 20 November 1767, from Jean-Claude Flachat (1718–1775), a merchant, traveler, and textile manufacturer from the Lyon region to Daniel Trudaine (1703–1769), an Intendant of Auvergne (1730), Intendant of Finances (1739), and Director General of the Ponts et Chaussées aka Bridges and Highways (1743). The note reads:
"I wrote to Mr. Peretié, a merchant in Smirne, my correspondent, outlining the intentions of the ministry, and after much trouble and danger, he managed to lure away two master dyers and a journeyman."
During this experimental period, both Indian Red and Turkey Red- dyed cotton were circulating in Europe. The quest for the perfect replicate resulted in several patents being filed. In fact, in the years leading up to 1785, the Society of Arts had already received more than 18 submissions concerning Turkey Red. In that backdrop, there was a John Wilson, a dyer from Manchester who had twice won the premium from the Society: In 1761 he was awarded £50 for producing the best Turkey Red and in 1763, to have made the color brighter. In France however, Emanuel Osmont accidentally produced a bright pink shade called Rose of Smyrna.
Premierement, c'est avec raison que les auteurs du proces verbal regardent comme nouvelle la couleur dont il s'agit; elle l'est en effet et par se beauté et par sa solidité, car en général les nuances legères des couleurs même les plus belles et les plus solides n'ont ni autant d'eclat a proportion, ni autant de ténacité que les mêmes teintures dans leur plénitude. Ce nouveau rose est par conséquent très estimable, et ne peut manquer d'être très avantageux aux manufactures, parce qu'il doit faire un très bel effet dans les siamoises et autres toiles de coton et fil en coton, soit pour habillements, soit pour meubles. — Pierre-Joseph Macquer, Rapport de roses solides sur le coton, 30 October 1782, AN F/12/994.
Translation: "Firstly, the authors of the report are right to consider the color in question as new; indeed, it is new both in its beauty and its fastness, for in general, even the lightest shades of the most beautiful and fast-drying colors do not have as much brilliance or tenacity as the same dyes in their full strength. This new pink is therefore highly valuable and cannot fail to be very advantageous to manufacturers, because it should create a very attractive effect in cotton and other cotton fabrics, whether for clothing or furniture." — Pierre-Joseph Macquer, Report on Solid Pinks on Cotton, October 30, 1782, AN F/12/994.
Let's not forget the main goal of these expeditions — master the technique of dyeing cloth with Turkey Red to be able to print motifs such as the paisley print on it.
But why go through these convoluted paths? Why not just import the fabric from the colonies?
In 1686, the French banned chintz imports from India and in 1700 & 1720, the British passed the Calico Acts which essentially banned the import of printed cotton textiles from India.
Why were these laws passed? Wasn't the need for colonizing these native industries to satiate the growing demands of the fabrics in Europe?
The answer was simple. It was to protect European domestic silk and wool industries, as the Indian fabrics were becoming more popular.
How do you reduce the export of Indian fabrics?
Cripple the Indian handicraft industry. In India, there is a saying that the British cut off the thumbs of Indian handloom weavers. This serves as a powerful metaphor for the economic devastation inflicted on the Indian handloom industry from monopolies, coercion, loss of patronage, raw material depletion, exploitative contracts and tariff.
How do you increase the demand for European fabrics?
Steal the Turkey Red formulation
Make European Turkey Red-dyed cotton
Patent it
Make printing designs possible on the cotton
Patent it
Sell the reproductions
In 1810, Daniel Kochelin, a textile printer from Mulhouse, France devised a method to discharge ink onto a Turkey Red-dyed fabric. The process involved bleaching a red color onto a motif. Eventually, the bleach was replaced by black or blue or yellow. By 1815 several prints were available of Turkey Red. Manufacturers from England, Scotland and France began exporting printed Turkey Red fabric to the North America, Africa and West Indies, to be worn by enslaved people. Some of these manufacturers include McBrayne, Stenhouse & Co., Monteith, Bogle and Co., Francis Garden & Co., Robert Bogle Jun. and Co. and more.
In the US specifically, these imported printed Turkey Red fabrics were used to make bandanas, handkerchiefs, petticoats, and quilts. It was a uniform for enslaved workers, especially those on the plantations. Bandanas have come to occupy US' national identity. While yes in some spaces they signify freedom and liberty however the very same bandanas have had a long history of piracy and death.
Yes, the bandanas occupy a specific symbology for the working class through the image of the miners. Yes the bandanas influenced queer cultures through the hanky code. And yet, for the People of the Global Majority, the bandanas are the reminder the colonization, of Empire, of manufactured starvation (especially in the case of producing the blue color due to Indigo farming), of livelihoods lost, of cultures erased due to colonial greed, and of centuries of customs appropriated to satiate that greed.
Afterall, in many settler colonial countries and countries that engaged in colonization, Nationality is an imagined community comprising of invented traditions.
“I propose the following definition of the nation: it is an imagined political community-and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign. It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.... Communities are to be distinguished, not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined.... Finally, [the nation] is imagined as a community, because, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship. Ultimately, it is this fraternity that makes it possible, over the past two centuries for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willing to die for such limited imaginings.”― Benedict Anderson
“Invented tradition’ is taken to mean a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behavior by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past... For all invented traditions, so far as possible, use history as a legitimator of action and cement of group cohesion.” ― Eric J. Hobsbawm, The Invention of Tradition
We have spent a lot of time discussing the color, let's talk about the the print.
The Paisley Print
The symbol can be traced to probably two regions — present day Iraq (1700 BCE) and city of Yazd, Iran (200-650 CE). In fact, in Yazd, the motif, Boteh jegheh (بته جقه) is woven into a traditional fabric called termeh. In fact across Central Asia and South Asia you will find this teardrop motif embroidered into fabric or even cast as ornaments. In Zoroastrianism, it takes the name Buta, which happens to be the national symbol of Azerbaijan even today! The Buta symbol Azerbaijan dates back to the first millennium BCE. Representing fire, it is woven into carpets and rugs.
In the Indian subcontinent it is used by different cultures to represent a cashew fruit, mango or even sprouting date palms. It goes by several local names:
Persian: Boteh jegheh. Boteh means a bush, shrub, or cluster of leaves, while jegheh refers to a royal feather or plume
Azerbaijani: Buta. It serves as the national symbol representing an almond or a bud
Dari (Afghanistan): Gol badam (flower/bud)
Punjabi: Ambi (from amb, meaning mango)
Hindi/Urdu: Kairi or carrey (unripe mango)
Marathi: Koyari (mango seed)
Gujarati: Keri or Kairi (meaning mango or unripe mango)
Rajasthani: Kalka or Badam (meaning mango or almond)
Maithili: Kalka (a term widely used across the Mithila region and Eastern India for the stylized mango motif)
Bengali: Kalka.
Telugu: Mamidi pinde (young mango)
Kannada: Maavinakai (meaning unripe mango)
Tamil: Mankolam (meaning mango pattern)
Indonesian: Mangga (mango)
![Wool & Silk woven shawl (c. 1848 - 1853) Elongated paisleys in blue and red ornamental pattern around the edge on ecru ground with ecru fringes. [Rijks museum, Amsterdam Archives]](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/18dab9_3d99a1786dcf450c90ad7c63d124cefd~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_980,h_513,al_c,q_90,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_avif,quality_auto/18dab9_3d99a1786dcf450c90ad7c63d124cefd~mv2.png)
Different cultures, multiple languages, all united via trade under one motif, one pattern woven into their fabrics. This rich history was interrupted by the advent of European colonialism, which sought out to disrupt local economies to mass-produce this pattern for the benefit of the Empire. The pattern was introduced to Europe through Pashmina shawls from Kashmir, India (and yes, the ultra-fine wool you pay for when you buy Cashmere fiber, came from the goats of Kashmir). While we are at, lemme tell you that shawl also comes from Persian (شال shāl).
During the Mughal Emperor Akbar's reign (1556 - 1605), the production of shawls had drastically risen. In fact, the Kashmir shawl became the currency of a political relationship. One of its earliest evidence of shawl-weaving dates back to Sultan of Kashmir, Zain-ul-Abidin (15th c.). Archaeological evidence of fibers dated them to 3000 BCE in the valley.
![Cashmere Shawl, Lyon (c. 1850 - 1870) Elongated multicolored paisleys. [Rijks museum, Amsterdam Archives]](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/18dab9_5ef48327e0554eb78f30e7e84d05e4e7~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_980,h_450,al_c,q_90,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_avif,quality_auto/18dab9_5ef48327e0554eb78f30e7e84d05e4e7~mv2.png)
With the arrival of the Mughal Empire, Babur's conquest of Delhi in 1526 and the consolidation of the empire under Akbar from 1556, transformed the shawl from a regional luxury to a global status object. Its introduction in Europe was around Napoleon's time, when he gifted the shawl to Joséphine, who becomes obsessed, reportedly owning hundreds and cutting some up to be remade into robes and furnishings.
By 1804, the Imitation Game begins. Joseph-Marie Jacquard's mechanical loom allows mills in Paisley (Scotland), Bradford (England), and France to produce shawls that imitate Kashmiri patterns mechanically. The Paisley pattern it was named, after the Scottish town whose mills imitated the pattern. A direct copy of the Kashmiri boteh motif, the European market is soon flooded with imitations. If you look into the copyright history you'll find that paisleys has been copyrighted in the 1840s by Scotland. The audacity to take a cultural motif of so many Central and South Asians, and to copyright it as your own!!!
Let's talk about some particulars. It was not just the paisley print, but also traditional weaving patterns that were pirated. Kani weave that we see in Kashmiri shawls was reproduced by the French. In the collage below, you can see a Kani weave on a Pashmina stole (c. 1800 - 1820) on the top followed by the portrait of the German Princess (c.1828) by Francois Joseph Kinsoen wearing the stole and a zoomed in image of its border. Below this you can see a French reproduction of the Kashmiri stole. The reproduction has a wider center than the Indian stole, making it a shawl and not a stole.
Towards the end of the 18th century and early 19th century the Napoleon's troops had conquered Algeria and Egypt, the latter being conquered from British occupation. By 1789, Napoleon began taking the spoils of war back to France. One such spoils was the Cashmere shawl. Evidence of it being worn can be seen in the portrait of Empress Josephine (1808).
I'm sure many critics reading this piece would argue that while yes Napoleon did conquer Egypt and yes his wife appears wearing the Cashmere shawl — how do we know the Cashmere was in Egypt and can we say this is authentically Kashmiri and not a French reproduction? The second half of the question can be easily verifiable as there are experts who have examined the tunic dress for its authenticity, and have identified the textile as genuine Kashmiri shawl.
As for the first half of the question, we have an account from Jean-Gabriel de Niello Sargy, a French military general who wrote sometime between the Battle of Saléhié (3 August 1798) and the Battle of Abukir (25 July 1799):
“During our geographical exploration, we neglected nothing to obtain positive information on the Mameluke march of Ibrahim-Bey. It was only on the approach to Belbeis that we learned that Ibrahim, united with the Arabs, had just captured the greater part of the caravan from India, with which he was preparing to cross into Syria. We immediately walked in the direction of Saléhié, to snatch it from his hands. We were hoping to each have beautiful cashmere shawls”.
For those wondering, Saléhié is a mountenous neighborhood in Damascus, Syria while Abukir is a coastal town in Egypt. While Saléhié united behind a Mamluk Commander, Ibrahim Bey against the French, Abukir had united behind Ottoman General Seid Mustafa Pasha. Mamluks were a class of enslaved people who rose to governing ranks in Egypt. Before the French arrived, the mamluks had gotten so powerful that without their approval, a Sultan could not rule Egypt. The Mamluk Sultanate was between 1250 - 1517, with a Sultan often seeking allegiance from the Mamluk Emirs (the military elite).
This unexpected note blurs the lines between military ambition and material desire. Art historian, Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby spoke how in post-revolutionary France, paintings depicted material, visual and sensory dimensions of sites of colonization. In fact, in painting Napoleon and his soldiers there was often an active site of cultural negotiation included in the paintings. The Kashmiri shawl, due to its prestige, came to occupy central roles in displaying colonial aesthetics.
In Jean-Antoine Gros’ painting of Bonaparte Visits the Plague-stricken in Jaffa (1804), Napoleon is centrally positioned, wearing a navy uniform and a scarlet Kashmir shawl, standing in sharp contrast to his near-nude, ailing soldiers. To further add to this interpretation of the painting, Napoleon is painted in a roi thaumaturge fashion, as if to say, one's proximity to him heals the afflicted, aligning the painting with Enlightenment models of rationality that were prominent in that era. The Kashmiri shawl here goes from being situated in cultural convergence to a symbol of colonial power.
Against this backdrop of colonial ambition, the Kashmir shawl became a potent symbol of colonial appropriation and cultural anxiety. In this context, colonial appropriation refers to the selective adoption of indigenous cultural elements such as the Kashmir shawl by colonial agents as a means of asserting power, while cultural anxiety captures the paradox inherent in this process: a simultaneous admiration for, and unease with, the colonised Other.
In fact, trade across the SWANA regions with Central Asia and South Asia had long existed before any colonial expedition to have taken place. The Kashmiri shawls shared a certain prestige amongst these civilizations, until being reduced to represent an object that needed to be conquered. In early 1920s, archaeological digs in Fustat (old Cairo), Egypt found block-printed and resistant-dyed fabrics originating from India. Further excavations at the Red Sea port of Quseir al-Qadim into the late1970s confirm a long trade history with the Mamluks dating all the way back to 13th to 14th centuries. To further add, shawls were part of Egyptian local culture long before the arrival of Napoleon, so much so that even the Reda troupes used it as an accessory to display a folk dance, Melaya Leff.
As Napoleon remarked shortly after arriving in Alexandria, the beauty and abundance of Egypt was inexorably tied to the Mamelukes: “Is there a beautiful region? It belongs to the Mamelukes. Is there a beautiful slave, a fine horse, or a magnificent house, whose is it but the Mamelukes?”
With regard to the shawl, mimicry and adoration often co-existed alongside domination, erasure and colonial appropriation. Perhaps in this reimagination of the post-revolutionary France, there was a shift from the male military body to objects from visual and material culture like the shawl. As such the shawl becomes a contested site of identity, power and cultural re-significance.
Let's get back to the story. So Napoleon has his hands on Kashmiri shawls. Empress Josephine popularized the fashion amongst the French nobility. We now enter an era of reproductions in order to fit in amongst with the fashion demands of the 19th c. You shall find examples of the ladies of the court outfitted with Kashmiri shawls when they pose to have their portraits taken.
The era of duplication/replication began with fashion demands. Many members of the nobility didn't have the financial/economic/industrial means to procure a real Kashmiri shawl. And hence, not only were the French involved in reproductions, but also the British and the Dutch. One such reproduction was discussed earlier. Let's revisit it. As we have seen this was a French reproduction of the Kashmiri shawl given to Napoleon.
Apart from the wider center, when you zoom in (go to the next slide), you'll observe some birds being embroidered on the borders of the shawl. Figurative depictions like these are uncommon in Kashmiri shawls as they are more pattern oriented. In contrast when we observe real Kashmiri shawls (below: Slide 1 dates c.1800-1820; Slide 2 dates c.1810-1830), the first one shows 4 embroidered paisleys on each corner with a kani weave on the borders, while the second we see how complicated the borders had gotten so hence they were also embroidered.
In the slides below we can see how the real shawls were embroidered (slide 1) before becoming more complicated (slide 2).
Slide 3 shows a Harlequin Kashmiri shawl on Pashmina (c.1820-1840) featuring different colored paisleys.
Slide 4 shows a different pattern altogether—its a Khatraaz (striped) Kashmiri shawl, kani on pashmina, also called a Jamawaar (c.1800-1820).
Slide 5 displays a Kashmiri chaadar (long shawl) with a Duck Blue Egg center on a Pashmina (c. 1830-1850)
Slide 6 shows a Two-seasons Kashmiri shawl (1840-1860). It was called two-season because depending on how you fold the shawl you'll end up displaying 2 colors. So people would fold the shawl to display blue and pink for 6 months, followed by folding it another way to display yellow and red for the next 6 months.
Reproductions in Europe took place in places like Pairs and Leon in France, Norwich and Edinburgh in England and Paisley in Scotland.
As seen below, Slide 1 shows a European reproduction that doesn't feature the paisley.
Slide 2 features a French Chaadar (long shawl) which is about 10-12 feet. One distinguishing factor between handloom and reproductions is that the latter sit flat and are lighter. Another distinguishing factor is that in Harlequin shawls the border is woven not embroidered, whereas in French reproductions they are embroidered.
Slide 3 depicts a French striped shawl, Jacqard Loom (c.1850-1870) It is trying to imitate the Indian Khatraaz but doesn't capture the complexity.
Japan v. Scotland Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) of Paisley motif
This one really cracked me up, knowing the history of the theft of the design and its rebranding after a town called Paisley in Renfrewshire, Scotland. Imagine coming across series of news channels reporting that Japan is trying to steal a stolen motif from the Scots. I'm gonna post the pictures of the entire interview here and have you decide how ridiculous this is.
Unfortunately, this never went to trial as the accused Kanebo Fashion Research Ltd. behind the Japanese Paisley Art Museum and Scotland's Renfrewshire Council reached an out-of-court settlement in April 2003 and a a commercial licensing agreement, which gave the Japanese Art Museum a stamp of authenticity from Scotland to market goods as officially endorsed by the real town of Paisley. What the Effing Fuck! "A Stamp of Authenticity" for a stolen motif on cheap fabric?!
''The Paisley Pattern is very important to Paisley's economic and cultural history and it's wonderful to think that the patterns developed here 200 years ago by the Paisley weavers still attract international attention and will now be worn again.'' — Valerie Reilly, Keeper of Textiles, Paisley Museum, Scotland “Paisley bids to find pattern for success by protecting brand” — The Herald (29th April 2017) “The idea of licensing the Paisley patterns produced by manufacturers in Paisley’s past is very interesting. There are a number of Paisley shawls which are noted as having national significance in the Paisley museum. These patterns could be subject to some form of protection.” — George Adam, Paisley MSP.
Japan and South Asia have had a history of over 1,400 years of trade. Fun-fact, those Boteh motifs had reached Japan through the Sarasa textile trade with Persia & India in the beginning of 17th century, long before the English and the Scotts stole the motif. In fact, the motif even began appearing in obi (sash) used to tie the kimonos.
The trade with Persia and India had also reached Armenia. As you can see below, its part of the Armenian national dress.
So the question is should the patent on paisley exist?
NO.
Because it is a shared heritage amongst cultures of SWANA, Central and South Asia.
To patent a symbol not belonging to your culture, and then claiming it as part of your heritage disregards the colonial mechanisms employed to colonize the symbol and market it.
While we speak of these traditions and heritage, we fail to read beyond the comfortable – we risk creating echo chambers. A more uncomfortable truth to sit with is that much of what we recognize and identify as heritage emblems have a colonial stain on them. For the bandanas you wear around your neck and on your foreheads, the ones hanging out of your pockets, could not have reached your lands had it not been for the Europeans administering colonial industries.
The symbol of Freedom required someone to be stripped of their freedoms before you could parade around with it. The bandana, the paisley, even the colors, are commodities that exist in your wardrobes with a bloodied history, a forgotten tale that requires you to remember.
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