Fabric Focus
TEXTILE TALES
The luxurious nap of this material beckons the hand, intrigues the eye and has for centuries been seen as a desirable investment to add richness to interiors
There is a sumptuous quality to velvet that cannot be emulated; the three-dimensional tactility of its soft pile yields to the touch but also plays coquettishly with light, both refracting rays with a subtle shimmer yet also absorbing them to intensify colour where shadows fall.
The finest velvets continue to be woven with silk fibres although weaves in cotton, linen, cashmere and mohair all offer beautiful variations. Synthetic fibre alternatives – nylon, polyester, acrylic – have significantly reduced price points, but these can only mimic the full charm of the natural fibre cloth, particularly in solid colour weaves.
In the weave
To understand velvet, you need to understand the weave, for the name refers to a specific structure rather than a fibre, and the distinctive pile fabric can require up to six times more thread than a simple warp and weft cloth – warp being the longitudinal and weft the horizontal threads.
In reference to handloomed velvets, Wendy Landry, handweaver, textile scholar and author of Velvet on My Mind, Velvet on My Loom (Schiffer Publishing Ltd) reveals: ‘True velvet is a pile fabric that is woven using a supplementary pile warp, usually held up by removable rods or wires, which raise and hold the pile above the foundation cloth. These rods determine the height of the pile.’ She goes on to explain how all such velvet begins as looped pile; cut pile is produced by cutting some or all of these loops, usually but not always while weaving of the cloth is in progress on the loom. This distinguishes it from other velvetysurfaced fabrics, the pile of which is achieved by methods including weftlooping, brushing, knotting, tufting, embroidering, needle-punching, and various other techniques.
There are also different varieties of velvet. Plain – or solid – velvet with a continuous, even pile is the most common form today but there are many variations. Velvet can be ‘pile on pile’ – featuring two – or exceptionally three – heights in one cloth. It can also be crushed, hammered, embroidered, embossed, digitally printed or painted upon. Additionally, ciselé velvet features cut and uncut loops to create pattern; voided velvet leaves deliberately visible areas of the foundation cloth as part of a figured design, and devoré velvet has sections ‘burnt’ out with applied caustic solution to leave a pattern in relief against a sheer back. Brocaded velvet is perhaps the most lavish of all, featur
