Reply to Thread

Message:: [QUOTE="2manybooks, post: 403264, member: 8267"]I think this may be what is called a "voided velvet". It is a complex technique, created on a drawloom which allows the creation of elaborate designs by controlling individual threads or small groups of threads on the loom. The drawloom was in use in China by the first century AD. The technology was later transferred to Persia and the Middle East, then Europe. It required at least 2 operators - a weaver inserting the weft threads, and a "draw boy" who sat on a platform above the loom and who pulled up sets of warp threads as the weaver called out the pattern. The red tufts are cut velvet - loops drawn up during the weaving, which are subsequently cut to create the pile effect. The flat areas (the "voids") are characteristic of drawloom work, with an intricate pattern incorporated into a base weave, with floats carried on the back of the cloth when a color is not needed. Complex brocades, satins, and other patterned fabrics were being created with hand operated drawlooms long before mechanization or computer controlled looms. Your textile is perfectly consistent with historical drawloom fabrics. A semi-mechanized version was invented in France by Joseph Marie Jacquard in 1804. He substituted a series of punched cards and a pin mechanism, which replaced the draw boy. While the colors and basic format seem derived from Ottoman or Mughal work, it seems to me to be more a European adaptation. Perhaps Italian.[/QUOTE]