You've seen it a thousand times: the curved teardrop with a bent tip, multiplying across silk and wool. We call it paisley. For most of its life it answered to another name.
Boteh: the seed of it
In ancient Persia the motif was the boteh — “shrub” or “bush” — a stylised sprig that came to stand for life, abundance and eternity. Some read it as a cypress tree bent in the wind, others as a seed, a mango, a flame. Whatever its source, it is one of the oldest decorative motifs still in everyday use, with roots stretching back more than two thousand years.
From the Mughal court to Kashmir
The motif flourished under the Mughal Empire and was woven, above all, into the famous shawls of Kashmir — spun from the downy wool of Himalayan goats and prized across Asia. When the East India Company carried those shawls to Europe in the eighteenth century they caused a sensation; the Empress Joséphine is said to have owned them by the dozen.
An Eastern symbol of eternity, renamed after a Scottish mill town.
How it became “paisley”
Demand outran supply, so European mills began to copy the design. The town of Paisley, in Scotland, did it most prolifically — by the 1850s some 6,000 weavers there were turning out the pattern on Jacquard looms. The town gave the motif the English name it still carries, even as the symbol itself remained thoroughly Eastern.
Several of our foulards — Brigitte, Sarah and Amelia — carry the boteh in that spirit: a wandering motif, centuries deep, worn at the throat. Explore the collection →