This marvelous white kerchief has been made in Orenburg region near Russia's Ural Mountains. This region is world famous by a century old tradition of shawl making. The delicate kerchief is knitted of the finest Orenburg goat down thread with addition of the silk one. It is so light that can pass through a ring. In spite of its weightlessness you can use it during winter times. 90 % wool, 10% silk.
Russian Orenburg Shawls have natural colors of the goats and can be white, grey or brown. Prices depend on size, on quality of threads used for making of the shawls and, of course, on quality of work. Each woman makes her own shawls with her own lacy ornaments and patterns.
In Russia with cold and long winters women used to wear these shawl everyday especially in country area. Each woman has at least two shawls - one for everyday usage and other one for holidays.
Many people ask what kind of material (wool) is used fro knitting of the Orenburg shawls. Authentic Orenburg shawls are made of goat down. Sometimes people by mistake call the down "cashmere" but this is not exactly so. People in Orenburg area breed species of goats that give not only milk but perfect soft and light down.
Goat down shawls are durable in usage, and the more shawl is used the more attractive it is.
Russian Orenburg shawls are really hand-made, they are produced in limited amount and each shawl is different and unique.
Orenburg Shawl Factory was established in 1960 in order provide growing demand for high quality goat down shawls for affording price. More than 30 small work-shops were organized into large enterprise. Many years were spent to organize manufacturing process, to develop, produce and tune unique machines and equipment and to gain a priceless experience.
Manufacturing of Orenburg shawls at the factory is the full cycle process beginning from gathering raw goat down and wool and ending of production of goods and utilization of scrap.
Orenburg goats down shawls are unique products and they demand unique equipment, unique technological process and high skill of workers. In past Orenburg shawls were handspun and hand knitted, a shawl-maker should spend about 2 weeks to weave a quality shawl not counting efforts and time spent for preparing yarn and threads. In the end quality of a ready shawl greatly depended on qualification of a weaver and its price was so higher that not many women could afford to wear beautiful shawls.
Nowadays the main part of Orenburg shawls, scarves, tippets, cobwebs are knitted by hand, only most labour-intensive and routine operation are made by machines. It allows knitters to concentrate only on creative operation of shawl knitting. The fact that some operations are machine made does not degrade quality of shawls and specific features of real hand-made Orenburg shawls but makes these items more perfect.
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