The workers in silver, copper, and brass are many, but their productions
are usually rough and inartistic. Genuine old beaten metal-work is almost
unobtainable, although occasionally desirable specimens from Leh do find
their way into the Srinagar shops.
Chinese porcelain is to be got, usually in the form of small bowls; but it
is not of remarkably good quality, and the prices asked for it are higher
than in London.
The jewellers' work is very far behind that of India. Amethysts of pale
colour and yellow topaz are cheap. Fine turquoise do not come into Kashmir,
but plenty of the rough stones (as well as imitations) are to be found,
which, owing to a transitory fashion, are priced far above their intrinsic
value. They come from Thibet.
A great deal of a somewhat soft and ugly-coloured jade is sent from
Yarkand, also agates and carnelian; beads of these are strung into rather
uncouth necklets, which may be bought for half the sum first asked.
Bargaining is an invariable necessity in all shopping in Kashmir, as
everywhere else in the East, where the market value of an article is not
what it costs to produce, but what can be squeezed for it out of the purse
of the--usually--ignorant purchaser.
Three things are essential to the successful prosecution of shopping in
Srinagar:--
(1) Unlimited time.
(2) A command of emphatic language, sufficient to impress the native mind
with the need for keeping to the point.
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