Road to Damaskus

This cleverly woven one-colour fabric was a sign of great wealth and status throughout the centuries and across continents, and still has a distinctive feel of luxury about it today, says Celia Rufey

- Celia Rufey

Damask trickled into Europe from China and the Byzantine and Islamic empires in the early Middle Ages. It was in silk; a cloth no one in Europe had seen before and a weave no one knew how to replicate. This intriguing interplay of warp and weft was developed in China, certainly by the 7th century. Using just one yarn colour, it created pattern by combining two different weave techniques that set areas of plain matt weave against areas woven in glossy sateen. Single-colour damask was, and still is, reversible; the pattern can be seen with matt motifs framed by sateen, or the other way round.

Damask takes it name from the Syrian capital, Damascus, a weaving and trading city, and a convergent point on the Silk Road. These various routes first brought cloth and much else to the Mediterranean from China and countries in between, including ones we know as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan. By the 9th century, damask weaving had arrived in Sicily and Spain following Islamic victories there, and it was taken to Italy when weavers from Sicily were brought to the city of Lucca in the 12th century, bringing their knowledge of damask weaving and designs.