Glossary of terms used on this site

A honeycomb weave.  See cellular fabric and honeycomb.

Two brins are exuded from the head of the silkworm to form the bave or silk filament.

An elaborate and richly figured fabric woven on a Jacquard loom using satin weave.  The warp float give a raised appearance.  Originally woven in silk, but now can be made with man-made fibres, with additional silver or gold threads. Was first produced in China.  Light weight brocade is used for apparel and heavier weights for furnishings.  A brocatine is a brocade with a raised pattern imitating embroidery.  Latin: brocare meaning to figure.

Similar to but heavier than brocade. The pattern, woven with two or more wefts with extra binder warp, in high relief on a Jacquard loom. 

A brocade fabric that is figured with additional weft threads introduced by means of swivel or lappet weaving. French: broché, figured. See lappet weaving.

A stiff fabric made of normally of cotton, linen, hemp or hair. A plain weave, open-sett fabric impregnated with fillers or stiffeners.  Also made by gluing two open-sett sized fabrics together.  Used as lining, bookbinding, sometimes known as Library Buckram, and in millenary.  Also a 16th century English woollen fabric used for church vestments. 

An highly twisted yarn made from continuous filament yarn components which has a coarse central core covered with either a finer yarn.  Used in the manufacture of bullion fringe, often covered with metallic threads and used in furnishing fabric decoration or military braiding.

A tall slim box fixed to the side of the Malaysian hand weaver\'s loom seat in which the long thin palm tree bark patterning sticks, bilah, are deposited during weaving.

A thick, coarse condenser yarn, usually spun from cotton waste. The count is traditionally expressed in yards per ounce and has normally ranged from 25 to 120 yd/oz (600 to 250 TEX). Woven into bump cloth normally used as absorbent floor cloth and oven gloves. See Appendix: yarn counts.

The expression to bunt, from the old English word meaning to sift, was a process used after grain milling when an open weave woollen cloth was stretched across the bunt or sieve. Coincidently the German word bunt means strong bright colours which are characteristic of bunting.  The German word for coloured fabric is buntgewebe.  Both these terms could be linked as they both describe the present day plain woven, crossbred cloth called bunting which is normally dyed in basic armorial colours of red, blue, yellow, white and black, with additions of green and orange, used for making flags or banners.  Bunting is known as étamine in France.

The North American term for sacking or hessian.

Removal of loose threads, knots, slubs, burrs, and other extraneous material from fabrics, before finishing without damaging them, by means of a burling iron or tweezers. A burl is a small knot or lump in a thread or fabric.

Wool containing vegetable matter in the fleece.

A block printed cotton fabric produced in Turkestan used for bedcovers or horse blankets.

Also known as buti. The floral decorative motive sometimes referred to as the paisley pattern originating in Persia and associated with the Mughal period. Derived from the shape of the mango, almond or pine cone. See paisley.