Makers
A short list, deliberately. These are the growers and weavers our family has worked with in Kashmir — the reason we can name a field rather than a region.
The maker
Ghulam Nabi Bhat
Saffron grower · Pampore, Pulwama, Kashmir · 41 years
Ghulam Nabi farms on the karewa uplands above Pampore, where the soil drains fast and the autumn nights turn cold early — the two conditions saffron needs. He picks at first light, before the flowers open fully, and separates the three stigmas by hand the same day. His yield is small by design: he replants corms on a fifteen-year cycle rather than pushing the field. We buy his entire October lot each year.
The maker
Fayaz Ahmad Dar
Pashmina weaver · Nowhatta, Srinagar, Kashmir · 28 years
Fayaz works with hand-spun Changthangi fibre brought down from the Changthang plateau in Ladakh. A plain shawl takes him around three weeks at the loom; a Kani-woven piece takes months, worked colour by colour with small wooden bobbins against a coded pattern called a talim. He will not weave with mill-spun yarn, which is why his output stays low and every piece is made to order.
The maker
Mohammad Yousuf Shah
Carpet knotter · Bemina, Srinagar, Kashmir · 33 years
Yousuf and two colleagues read the talim aloud as they knot — a written script that records every knot and colour of a design. A three-by-five foot silk carpet at his knot density takes the workshop the better part of a year. We commission carpets rather than stock them, so the loom is never idle and no piece sits in a warehouse waiting for a buyer.
The maker
Hafiza Bano
Kahwa blender and forager · Rainawari, Srinagar, Kashmir · 19 years
Hafiza blends our kahwa by hand: whole-leaf green tea, cardamom crushed at the moment of blending, cinnamon bark broken rather than ground, and saffron from the same lot as our tins. In April and May she is on the Pir Panjal slopes instead, walking for morels, which cannot be farmed at any useful scale and so are simply found or not found.
The maker
Abdul Rashid Wani
Beekeeper · Tral, Pulwama, Kashmir · 24 years
Abdul Rashid keeps 120 hives and moves them down to the acacia belt below Pulwama when the kikar comes into flower. He extracts cold, strains once and jars without heating or blending, which is why the honey sets slowly and stays pale. Each jar carries the apiary and the week it was drawn.
The maker
Showkat Ahmad Bhat
Papier-mâché and walnut wood · Zadibal, Srinagar, Kashmir · 22 years
Showkat works both crafts that Srinagar is known for indoors: sakhtsazi, the building of forms from paper pulp, and walnut carving. The painting on his boxes is done by a naqash with a squirrel-hair brush and ground pigment, then lacquered in four to six sanded layers. His walnut trays are cut from a single board and finished in oil so they can be re-oiled at home.
Harvest notes
Occasional letters from Kashmir: the state of the crop, new lots, and when a piece comes off the loom.