Benazir felicitates Sherry Rehman for winning international award for Kashmiri Shawl

Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has felicitated PPP Information Secretary Sherry Rehman for winning an international award for co-authoring a book on Kashmiri shawls.

Islamabad, Dec 10 : Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has felicitated PPP Information Secretary Sherry Rehman for winning an international award for co-authoring a book on Kashmiri shawls.

The book titled Kashmiri Shawl: From Jamawar to Paisley, jointly written by Sherry Rehman and Naheed Azfar, a former head of Design Department at the National Book Foundation, has won the R.L. Shep Award from the Textile Society of America.

Congratulating the authors, Bhutto said, "The book is a lasting testament to Kashmir's glorious cultural heritage and art patronage for well over 500 years".

"It is a wonderful example of Pakistani achievement in the neglected field of art and culture, and is a subject that celebrates the beauty and refinement of our indigenous craft traditions," Bhutto added.

She expressed the hope that the award to Rehman would inspire the young people to strive for achieving distinction.

'The Kashmiri Shawl' is the story of this textile re-told through the prism of a South Asian perspective.

The book realigns the design symbolism and technical evolution of the shawl to indigenous sources by emphasizing areas previously ignored in earlier histories.

The shawl's origins in Kashmir, the rich vein of patronage it thrived on, its changing ornamental face, its regional variations in Persia and Punjab, its enormous impact on the European imagination, all combine to form a narrative shaped to engage both the general reader and the specialist.

Enduring as a design classic that has grown out of an indelible local aesthetic, the shawl's appeal lies in its ability to represent continuity as well as change.

ANI