Boteh
Also: buta, paisley motif
A boteh, or buta, is a teardrop or cone-shaped motif from India and Persia that Europeans came to call paisley.
A boteh (also spelled buta) is a teardrop or cone-shaped motif, often filled with flowers and leaves. It is the shape Europeans now call paisley.
Where does the word come from?
In India and Persia the motif is called buta or boteh. The RISD Museum notes that its origin is debated: one theory links it to a wing or leaf form in ancient Near Eastern art, another to a single flower flanked by leaves in seventeenth-century Persian art. The Cleveland Museum of Art describes botehs on Kashmir shawls as the end point of a change from isolated plants to dense blossoms packed into cones.
Why do we say paisley?
Because weavers in Paisley, Scotland, copied Kashmir shawls so widely that the town's name became the English word. The full story is in Why is it called paisley?.
Sources
- What's in a Name? The Paisley Pattern in Kashmir Shawls. RISD Museum
- Apricot Long Shawl, 1785–1800 (2008.215). Cleveland Museum of Art
See also
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