Is it very, very good?
In French Lessons, author Peter Mayle, reluctantly persuaded to spend a week at a healthful retreat in rural France, arrived to find himself first face-to-face with a terrace “where a table had been smothered in white linen, decorated with fresh flowers… At a stroke, I felt my misgivings about spas begin to melt away.”
Any table, from formal to alfresco, dressed with real linens ~ softness ironed crisp, white woven exotic ~ transforms eating into an occasion.
Most fine table linens able to do such magic do not come from the past 60 post-WWII years of alleged wrinkle free synthetics and increased economical workforces. They come from the trousseaux and linen presses of women generations removed.
Anyone who has collected these silky, creamy linens for the past few decades knows how rapidly these stores are depleting, and how cheaply the vanishing damasks can still be had.
The main obstacle to collecting linen damasks is that it is a complicated endeavor. References are few. Trying to discern sure quality in a shop, auction or estate sale setting is often all but impossible. So, when it comes to the best, antique and vintage, how does a buyer -- especially an internet buyer lacking the ability to touch the smooth, cool surfaces -- know which are good, which are poor and which are treasures?
Being able to recognize a few simple weaves, count threads, appreciate patterns and a few minor tricks can go a long way.
Most fine table linens able to do such magic do not come from the past 60 post-WWII years of alleged wrinkle free synthetics and increased economical workforces. They come from the trousseaux and linen presses of women generations removed.
Anyone who has collected these silky, creamy linens for the past few decades knows how rapidly these stores are depleting, and how cheaply the vanishing damasks can still be had.
The main obstacle to collecting linen damasks is that it is a complicated endeavor. References are few. Trying to discern sure quality in a shop, auction or estate sale setting is often all but impossible. So, when it comes to the best, antique and vintage, how does a buyer -- especially an internet buyer lacking the ability to touch the smooth, cool surfaces -- know which are good, which are poor and which are treasures?
Being able to recognize a few simple weaves, count threads, appreciate patterns and a few minor tricks can go a long way.
Single vs. Double
The queen of fine table linens is indisputably pure linen damask, lustrous and cool, reflective of all things flame, silver and porcelain. And if linen damask is queen, double damask is her shining, favored princess. Double damask has a higher luster, is heavier, drapes more luxuriously. Because of the weave the designs are more defined, lines crisper and satin against matte contrast more striking.
The napkins above compare four Irish damask table linens. All are from the 1900-1930 period. A and B are Irish linen single damask, C and D are Irish double damask. All are photographed, lighted, sized and contrast-enhanced as evenly as possible.
All table linen damasks are jacquard loomed (save the very, very old) with a jacquard machine mounted on either a hand controlled dobby loom or a mechanized power loom. The reversible designs are formed by threads woven over multiple perpendicular threads or yarns. The long unwoven threads – floats – are shiny on the side they pass over and matte on the side they cannot be seen. Between them is the ground, evenly woven, identical on both sides.
Determining double damask from single damask is relatively easy. In the pattern of the double damask, the floats or floating threads pass over 7-8 perpendicular threads before anchoring under one thread. Single damask passes over 5 threads and under one. I’ve found sources that say it’s weft threads over warp threads and other that say warp over weft. In examining different linens, I’ve found examples both ways, even in the same piece.
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Warp and weft: warp yarns are those first placed in the loom and running away from the weaver. Think Starship Enterprise in warp drive streaking off into space. (Imagine my surprise when I found that was not an original thought!) Weft, or fill, threads are those woven through the warp, side-to-side, selvage-to-selvage. Some say think “left for weft.” I think that’s stretching it a bit. But if you remember one, you’ll know the other.
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These thread patterns are easy to see, but those without bionic eyes need tools – strong light and a loupe, magnifying glass or linen tester. Or ramp up the magnification on a scanner, as I’ve done here:
The photo on the left, linen B (see photo set at the beginning for less magnified view) is single damask with red lines showing the five warp threads passing under the weft float. On the right, linen D, shows eight warp thread under one weft thread.
There is a codicil here. Any damask is only as good as its yarns. Double damask with low quality yarn can be inferior to single damask with high quality yarns. However, if you stick to antique or vintage linens, especially those from the better companies, double damask is superior and more valuable.
In addition, the best double damask cloth is overwefted, having a higher thread count of weft threads than warps. These packed threads give even more shine and definition to the patterns, producing a cloth that seems to have no individual threads at all. Overwefting can be 10 to 15 percent, or as much as twice as many weft yarns than warp. In the two double damask examples in the first photo set, C’s weft count is 14 percent more than it’s warp (112 warp/128 weft to the inch) and in D it’s 28 percent more (112/144). Notice the extra sheen of D over C, and especially over single damasks A and B. Overwefted damask is always superior in that extremely high quality yarn is necessary to withstand the loom “beating” the extra threads into the cloth.
With all that said, single damasks have advantages of their own. The more muted single damasks have their own beauty. And with all its flash, the long floats of double damask make it more susceptible to snagging. If all things are even –thread count, quality of yarns, finishing and bleaching -- single damask is the more durable because its threads are tighter and firmer. But double is where the unmatched beauty is.
Whether single or double, all fine antique and vintage unmarred damask linens are collectible in that they are all made of quality linen yarns that are not and can not be duplicated as old tasks involving clear stream water and sun fall to chemicals and machines.
Outside the Irish Mills
It’s been said that the finest flax is grown in Northern Europe, Belgium and France specifically, but that the finest weaving is done in Ireland. Italy may take exception to the latter as Italian designers and weavers have made some of the most exceptional cloth ever done, most notably Frette of Milan, which has been making linens for Italian royalty, European nobles and the Vatican since the 1880s.
French damask is known for its designs and a distinctive, if subtle, look in that the French do not beetle – a finishing process in which the cloth is literally beat with mallets – their cloth, thus leaving round, unflattened yarns.
Still the single/double Irish damask concept can provide a general understanding for European continental damasks that seem not to conform. In the French piece below, weft floats are shot over six warp threads, leaving it smack in the middle between double and single damask rules. And, the “shadow” of the napkin’s main pattern is done with a two over one. Fine French linen damasks are known for their exquisite designs.
French damask is known for its designs and a distinctive, if subtle, look in that the French do not beetle – a finishing process in which the cloth is literally beat with mallets – their cloth, thus leaving round, unflattened yarns.
Still the single/double Irish damask concept can provide a general understanding for European continental damasks that seem not to conform. In the French piece below, weft floats are shot over six warp threads, leaving it smack in the middle between double and single damask rules. And, the “shadow” of the napkin’s main pattern is done with a two over one. Fine French linen damasks are known for their exquisite designs.
The Italians, though they grow no flax in their own country, have a tradition of fine damask weaving. The napkin pictured below comes from a 1927 set woven for Italian King Vittorio Emanuele III. Note its elaborate weave. The majority of floats are six threads over one. It was custom made by Frette and a recent purchase from Cynthia's Antique & Vintage Linens.
To those of us who don’t have small fortunes to spend on table linens, the only way to get the quality linens of the past is to literally buy those made in the past. Equal quality modern linens are rare and expensive.
The economics of using the methods needed to produce equal quality linens is prohibitive. Expensive fine yarns are still needed to make double and intricate weave damasks. Also the process of overwefting produces less cloth per unit of raw product and looms used to overweft have to be run at slower speeds to force the weft yarns closer together and not break the brittle linen threads in the process, causing more expensive man hours.
Today only one firm manufactures Irish linen double damask, Thomas Ferguson & Co. Ltd in Banbridge, Northern Ireland. The fine Northern European damask to match the old are done only by small boutique shops. And there are firms like Frette that provide custom orders.
For those who can afford them.
The economics of using the methods needed to produce equal quality linens is prohibitive. Expensive fine yarns are still needed to make double and intricate weave damasks. Also the process of overwefting produces less cloth per unit of raw product and looms used to overweft have to be run at slower speeds to force the weft yarns closer together and not break the brittle linen threads in the process, causing more expensive man hours.
Today only one firm manufactures Irish linen double damask, Thomas Ferguson & Co. Ltd in Banbridge, Northern Ireland. The fine Northern European damask to match the old are done only by small boutique shops. And there are firms like Frette that provide custom orders.
For those who can afford them.
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