DAMASK AND DAMASK FABRICS.

The fabrics designated under the denomination of damask are made of silk, silk floss, wool, wool and cotton, cotton only, and finally cotton mixed with yarn. We will first talk about silk damask.

The fabrics designated under the denomination of damask are made of silk, silk floss, wool, wool and cotton, cotton only, and finally cotton mixed with yarn. We will first talk about silk damask.
The name of this fabric seems to have been given to it because the first fabrics of this kind came from the city of Damascus in Syria. According to M. Pardessus (Collection of maritime laws prior to the eighteenth century), from the time of the Merovingian dynasty, that is to say, from the fifth and sixth centuries, Damascus sent us various kinds of fabrics from silk, which was manufactured there in quantity, and which were the object of a very considerable exportation.
Throughout the Middle Ages, Damascus cloths enjoyed great fame. They were also simply called damask. The variety of these rich fabrics was prodigious; we find proof of this in old accounts or inventories. There were all colors and shades; however, white damask appears to have been the rarest, and black the most common, but they were made into greens, blues, crimson purples, yellows, reds, vermeils, etc., etc.
There were also two colors, for example blue and white, green and purple, etc., etc.
As for the fabrics called Damascus gold cloths, they were, properly speaking, gold or silver cloths, which came from Damascus, or which were supposed to come from there. It is even very probable that all damask was not made exclusively in the city which gave it its name, and that it came from all over the East. It is common knowledge, moreover, that the Chinese have manufactured this kind of fabric since the earliest times.
It is also established, by inventories of the XIVth century, that, from this time, the damask were in use at the court of the Dukes of Burgundy, where luxury was carried to a very high degree.
Damask was most commonly used for clothing of both sexes; however, it was also used for other uses, and what proves it is that in an account of 1432 (see the History of the Dukes of Burgundy, 2émé part, volume 1), there is mention of two parts very rich Damascus cloth, bought from a merchant named Paul Melian, originally from Lucca and living in Bruges. These two pieces of fabric were intended to cover the burial places of two sons of the Duke of Burgundy; for it was then the custom to spread rich fabrics on the tombs.
Several other accounts or inventories from the same period, or more recent, speak of the damask sheets of Lucca.
We will observe here that, according to all appearances, the designations of Damascus cloth and simply damask, were given, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, to two different kinds of fabrics; these designations indicated, for one of these fabrics, the true or supposed provenance; for the others, the design that decorated them.
But, from the 16th century, this distinction having faded, there were only damask fabrics, which were not always of silk.
It is quite certain that, from the 15th and 16th centuries, damask and other rich fabrics did not come only from the East, Constantinople and Spain; Italy also made them. Florence, Lucca, Bologna, Venice, Milan and Genoa, from then on had many workshops from which came out and were exported in fairly large quantities, velvets, satins, damask, taffeta, serges, and other varieties of silks.
Silk fabrics were then made in almost all the towns of Italy. Vicenza, Genoa and Bologna provided more especially plain fabrics; but the most considerable manufactures and the most advanced from the point of view of art, were those of Lucca and Venice, the products of which were sought, not only abroad, but in Italy and even in the cities where silks were also made. This is what contemporary documents find; because the mentions of cloths of gold and of silk cloth from Lucca are found at every moment in the old accounts or inventories that we have had to consult.In the eleventh century, the county Yenaissin, which was part of the states of the Church, owed to the stay that the popes made long enough in Avignon, an increase in industrial prosperity. The culture of the mulberry tree, the education of silkworms, and the manufacture of some silk fabrics were introduced successively in the county.
Originally, in Avignon, only a fabric with a silk warp and a woolen weft was made, known then under the name of doucette. But soon, all silk fabrics, plain and shaped, were woven there, especially damask, the manufacture of which was introduced by the Genoese who had come to settle in Avignon.
The manufacture of silks was introduced in France, from the XVC century, under the reign of Louis XI.
It was believed for a long time that the first manufacture which existed in France, was established in Tours in 1470; but letters patent of Louis XI, given in Orléans