page_title: Damask
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Damask / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Exhibit in the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. This work is old enough so that it is in the public domain. Photography was permitted in the museum without restriction.
context_page_description: Damask is a reversible figured fabric of silk, wool, linen, cotton, or synthetic fibers, with a pattern formed by weaving. Damasks are woven with one warp yarn and one weft yarn, usually with the pattern in warp-faced satin weave and the ground in weft-faced or sateen weave. Twill damasks include a twill-woven ground or pattern.
context_section_description: The production of damask was one of the five basic weaving techniques—the others being tabby, twill, lampas, and tapestry—of the Byzantine and Middle Eastern weaving centres of the early Middle Ages. Damasks derive their name from the city of Damascus—in that period a large city active both in trading (as part of the silk road) and in manufacture. Damasks became scarce after the 9th century outside Islamic Spain, but were revived in some places in the 13th century.
  The word "damask" first appeared in records in a Western European language in the mid-14th century in French. By the 14th century, damasks were being woven on draw looms in Italy. From the 14th to 16th century, most damasks were woven in one colour with a glossy warp-faced satin pattern against a duller ground. Two-colour damasks had contrasting colour warps and wefts, and polychrome damasks added gold and other metallic threads or additional colours as supplemental brocading wefts. Medieval damasks were usually woven in silk, but weavers also produced wool and linen damasks.
caption: Damask with floral sprigs, Italy, Baroque, 1600-1650, silk two-tone damask
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