Damask. This name, long given to certain fabrics with ornamental patterns, appears to have originated through Damascus having become, as early as the 12th century, so celebrated for its figured silks that they were sought for everywhere. The term damask is now applied to stuffs made for table-covers, window curtains, and furniture coverings, with floral, scroll, heraldic, or partly geometrical patterns woven in the loom, but not to printed designs. There are silk, woollen, linen, and cotton damasks. Some are of two materials, usually dyed of different colours, such as silk and linen, or silk and wool, while many old damasks are of silk and gold. There are other figured textiles more or less resembling damask, such as Brocade (q.v.) and figured Velvet (q.v.), but on these the pattern is generally, at least slightly, raised, while in damask the surface is flat, and the pattern is distinct on both sides of the cloth. The structure of damask, like diaper, is merely a variety of twilling. It is by the order in which the warp threads are raised and depressed for the interweaving with the weft that the pattern is produced; the weft, as a rule, intersecting the warp from every fourth up to every eighth thread. This is accomplished by a Jacquard apparatus attached to the loom. The pattern is first painted on a specially prepared paper, and then 'read off' and perforated on cards by a cutting machine made for the purpose, each card being made to control the arrangement for one shot or weft thread. These cards, which may be from 200 to 2000 in number, are laced into an endless chain, and made to revolve on a cylinder forming part of the apparatus. The holes in the cards correspond to a certain number of cross 'needles,' into which are looped upright wires terminating in hooks for lifting the warp threads. The mechanism for raising such of these wires, and with them the warp threads as are required for each throw of the shuttle, is explained under JACQUARD-LOOM. It requires four Jacquard-machines to complete some patterns of damask, and a greater number if the design is exceptionally elaborate.
Table-linen damask is perhaps the kind most largely made. In Great Britain, the principal seats of this manufacture are Dunfermline in Scotland, Belfast in Ireland, and Barnsley in Yorkshire. At some of the linen damask mills in England and Scotland, coloured union damask, of wool and linen, is also made on a large scale. Cotton damasks, both dyed and undyed, are woven extensively at Manchester and its neighbourhood, as well as at Glasgow and Paisley. The mills where all-wool damasks are chiefly manufactured are situated at or near Halifax and Bradford, where a new kind, consisting of mohair, or of mohair and silk, has been recently fabricated. Silk damasks are principally made in the neighbourhood of London. Since 1860, largely through the labours of Dr Bock of Aix-la-Chapelle, one or two very interesting collections of European damasks and other figured stuffs, ranging in date from the 13th to the 16th century, have been made. A catalogue with some illustrations of the specimens in the South Kensington Museum was prepared some years ago by the Rev. Dr Daniel Rock. Since then some remarkable examples have been added, and the authorities of that institution are now publishing large coloured illustrations of these. The original pieces, even though many of them are much faded, give a vivid idea of the beauty of the products of the looms of Sicily, of Florence, Venice, Lucca, and Genoa, and of some Spanish towns, during the middle ages. The materials of which they are made are silk alone, silk and gold, silk and linen, and silk and cotton. When flowers or animals are represented on these damasks, they are conventionally, not realistically, treated, and the designs of most of them are so appropriate and effective, that even the chromolithographs of them are of great value not only to the textile designer, but to students of every branch of decorative art.