About Us

Miraas means inheritance. It is the word for what one generation leaves in the hands of the next, and it is the only name this house could have carried.

Our story does not begin in 2026. It begins in the Kashmir valley, and then in the 1990s in India, where our father built a company called Shah & Shafiq. In time it became one of the foremost exporters of Kashmiri craft to the world: pashmina shawls and gotras, hand-knotted carpets, and the fine, painted papier-mâché that the valley has been celebrated for across centuries. The work was exacting and the standards were not negotiable. That reputation reached far. Among those who wore what the house produced was one of the late founding rulers of the United Arab Emirates. We hold that history quietly and with great pride.

We are a family now settled in the United Kingdom, but our roots have never left the valley. That gives us something that cannot be bought or shortcut: the ability to look at a piece of pashmina and know. To feel the underside down between two fingers and recognise where it came from, how it was combed, how it was spun. This is not expertise learned from a brochure. It was learned at home, over decades, from the people who made these things by hand.

It was as a diaspora family that we saw the problem clearly. The pashmina of our childhood is treated in our culture the way fine jewellery is treated, an heirloom handed from mother to daughter, kept and worn and remembered. Yet here in the West, what carries that name is too often a machine-made imitation, or an authentic piece priced so far beyond reach that it stops being an inheritance and becomes a trophy. For all the love this craft is held in, it had become quietly inaccessible to the very families who cherish it most. That gap is painful to witness, and it is the reason this house exists.

Miraas Kashmir was founded in 2026 to close it. We work directly with master artisans in Srinagar, the same valley our family comes from, and we bring their work to you with nothing hidden in between. Every piece is sourced at its origin and accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity, because trust, in this trade, has to be earned rather than claimed. Our shawls and stoles carry Sozni, Kani, Tilla and Aari work of a standard the family name has always demanded.

This is the beginning of something we intend to grow. We are building Miraas to serve the families who understand what these pieces mean, from diaspora weddings where a shawl becomes part of the day's memory, to homes far beyond, wherever fine craft is still recognised for what it is. We are reviving a legacy, but more than that we are returning something to the people it was always meant for.

A piece from Miraas is not bought so much as kept. We would be honoured for it to become part of your family, as it has been part of ours.

The craft

Four techniques carry the work of the valley. Each is taught by hand, from one generation to the next, and each takes years to learn well.

Sozni

Fine needle embroidery, worked with a needle finer than a hair. Sozni is stitched from the front so the reverse of a good piece reads almost as cleanly as the face. A dense sozni jaal — an all-over pattern across the field of the shawl — is often the work of a single artisan for many months, sometimes years. It is what most people mean when they picture Kashmiri embroidery.

Kani

Woven, not embroidered. In a Kani piece the colour is built into the cloth itself, carried across the warp on small wooden bobbins as the weaver follows a coded pattern called a talim, read aloud to them line by line. A Kani weaver may advance only a few centimetres in a full day. The finest pieces take the better part of a year at the loom.

Tilla

Flat metal thread laid down by hand across the ground of the shawl, its glint catching light from every angle. Tilla work is traditionally paired with heavier weaves and often sits alongside sozni. Historically it was the language of ceremonial and bridal pieces, worn on the occasions a family remembers.

Aari

Chain-stitch worked with a hooked needle called an aari. The stitch itself is quick but the compositions are elaborate — bold floral jaals and paisley fields that cover the cloth. Aari is also the Kashmiri word for the finest grade of pashmina fibre itself, the underside down of the Changthangi goat, and the two meanings sit close in the vocabulary of the valley.

We are gradually adding photographs of the artisans at work, taken by the family in Srinagar.