Velvetweaving today: A worldwide overview

Velvet is a luxury cloth. In Fashion it dresses the Elite. In Interiors, it covers palace walls and upholsters elegant furniture. In every culture throughout its history velvet's sumptuous surfaces denotes luxury, status, power, privilege and wealth. My humble aim is to reveal the artisan in the art-to comprehend the mastery of weaving techniques, to understand the design principles, to study the everyday practice of the weavers at work. In the few ateliers that still weave silk velvet by hand, I have documented their processes and now want to share this knowledge with the broader textile community in hopes of expanding the appreciation of their art. I approach as a fellow weaver striving to learn the mechanics, the practical aspects that guide the work from initial idea to finished cloth. I leave the difficulties of establishing provenance and other important analyses to my more learned textile historian colleagues.