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Orenburg Goat-Down Gossamer Shawl

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The Orenburg gossamer shawl is a hand-knit web spun from the world's finest goat down — sixteen to eighteen microns, thin enough that a whole shawl slips through a wedding ring. Traditionally white or grey and undyed, its snowflake lattice reads as light-on-dark: pale knitted stitches breathing across the smoky slate of a Ural winter. This system is that web — hairline linework, vast negative space, no colour that the animal did not already carry.

Learn more about the Orenburg Goat-Down Gossamer Shawl style

  • OriginSouth Ural steppe, Orenburg, Russia
  • Period18th century onward (Ural / Orenburg folk craft; catalogued at 19th-c. trade exhibitions)
  • DesignerAnonymous Cossack and peasant knitters · Galina Khmeleva · Carol Noble
  • MovementsRussian folk textile art · Undyed down-lace pautinki knitting

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