This textile fragment is made of silk and metallic thread. The shiny, long, and smooth silk threads were created by boiling the cocoons of silkworms, or worms that eat the leaves of mulberry trees. A craftsperson would then weave these silk threads on a drawloom: “mechanized weaving devices programmed with preset patterns that automatically repeated designs across the cloth” (Williams, 178). Drawloom technology operates using a weft and warp system. The warp is fixed while the weft is manipulated between the warps. The use of a drawloom to create this medallion silk and many others is evidenced by the vertical center line of symmetry that runs through each roundel; the mirrored Arabic text further reveals this. This textile fragment was created using lampas, or a complex weave technique developed sometime between the 10-12th centuries. In essence, lampas is a dual layered weave; it employs a base weave often made of silk and an additional layer, often of metallic threading, woven over the base layer that creates the design. Both the silk and metallic threading are weft layers and would each have their own warp. The use of metallic threading significantly added to the value of such textiles.
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