The Orenburg Down Shawl and the Wedding Ring

When it comes to the Orenburg shawl, one of the most common folk criteria is: a genuine Orenburg down shawl passes through a wedding ring. So is this a misconception or a real guarantee of quality? It is worth putting it this way: the criterion has a real basis, but today it has practically lost its force and is not decisive. Why?

First, let us turn briefly to history. The down-knitting craft of the Orenburg region, just like the down shawl itself, originated in the mid-19th century. We can judge this era from historical sources, literature and cinema. And if we recall the descriptions of young women of that time, we see that standards of beauty differed greatly from today's. Yes, we mean that full-figured women were in fashion, especially among the nobility. And at society receptions and gala evenings, light openwork down shawls and gossamer shawlswere held in high regard. For them, the Orenburg down shawl was more an accessory, an element of image and luxury, than a "means of keeping warm", so very dense and large warm shawls, for example, were not very popular.

Here we smoothly come to the second point: the Orenburg down shawl is a rather collective term. Saying "shawl" in casual conversation, people may mean either a dense warm shawlor a light gossamer shawl. Both items may be knitted in the Orenburg region from the down of Orenburg goats, and it is this criterion that is decisive in whether the shawl in front of us is genuine. At the same time, the knitters' skill improves year after year, the range of items made expands and standards change; as a result, the distinguishing criteria change, and some of them, even if they have a real basis, lose their force over time.

So can one say that if an item does not pass through a wedding ring, it is not a genuine Orenburg down shawl? Of course not. Mentioning again the great variety of down products today, one can say that not even every relatively dense gossamer shawl will pass through the wedding ring of a delicate lady with a slender finger, considered today the ideal of beauty by most men. Not to mention large warm shawls of dense knitting – naturally, it is pointless even to try this trick. But does an item made from the down of the legendary Orenburg goats, hand-knitted by a craftswoman with many years of experience passed down from generation to generation, but which has not passed this "folk test", not have the right to be called Orenburg?