Small World
The astonishingly detailed Srinagar Map from the V&A inspires Lewis & Wood’s latest collection
The V&A has many astonishing things in its collections, but few can be as utterly charming as the Srinagar Map. Originally made in around 1870 and given as a gift to Queen Victoria, this embroidered goats-wool shawl minutely chronicles Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir, and it seems like every street, every house and every mosque has been stitched onto its 250x160cm surface (with tiny inscriptions alongside each), with the expanse of Dal Lake and the river Jhelum providing contrasting planes of blue.
Lewis & Wood has taken this extraordinary historical document, thought to have taken 30 years to make, and used it to inspire a collection of fabrics and wallcoverings. The Srinagar Map collection reinterprets the shawl in a variety of ways, in different scales and colours, and adding and subtracting visual information to hone in on a particular detail.
‘The Map Maxi’ (pictured top) is a life-size print of the shawl, while ‘The Map Mini’ is the full map at quarter scale. ‘Utopia’ (above left) is a repeating version of the whole map, on a half-drop repeat.
Lewis & Wood’s designers have also more loosely and playfully reinterpreted the map’s many motifs, with ‘Ravi Ribbon’ (pictured on bench, above right), a wide stripe featuring houses, sprigs and trees edged with a trim of individual animals and tiny hills; and ‘Regatta’ (above centre), which draws out the detail of the original map’s rendering of Dal Lake, with abstract islands and houseboats surrounded by water birds and hyacinths.
Visit the showroom to see the collection in all its glorious, transporting detail.
