Brocade is a class of richly decorative shuttle-woven fabrics, often made in coloured silks and sometimes with gold and silver threads. The name, related to the same root as the word "broccoli", comes from Italian broccato meaning "embossed cloth", originally past participle of the verb broccare "to stud, set with nails", from brocco, "small nail", from Latin broccus, "projecting, pointed".
Cope and chasuble; Brocade of Lyon. 19th Century
Silk brocade fabric, Lyon, France, 1760–1770.
Detail of hair-sash being brocaded on a Jakaltek Maya backstrap loom.
Large Yunjin brocade loom, Nanjing, China, 2010
A loom is a device used to weave cloth and tapestry. The basic purpose of any loom is to hold the warp threads under tension to facilitate the interweaving of the weft threads. The precise shape of the loom and its mechanics may vary, but the basic function is the same.
A treadle-driven Hattersley & Sons Domestic Loom, built under licence in 1893, in Keighley, Yorkshire. This loom has a flying shuttle and automatically rolls up the woven cloth; it is not just controlled but powered by the pedals.
A woman in Konya, Turkey, works at a vertical loom
A simple handheld frame loom
A Turkish carpet loom showing warp threads wrapped around the warp beam, above, and the fell being wrapped onto the cloth beam below.
