renders it, of course, necessary to use two shuttles, which must be exchanged for each other at constantly recurring but unequal intervals. It has indeed been shown, that the weaver of velvet requires to exercise an unintermitting carefulness in the succession of operations which he has to conduct. The use of the trevat în cutting the pile calls for a certain amount of skilfulness or sleight of hand, only to be fully acquired through care and after long practice, while the minutest deviation from the proper line in performing this part of the process would infallibly injure, if even it did not destroy, the goods; and the movements to be made throughout the entire operation are, as has been shown, so numerous, and require such constant changing of the hand from one action to another, that the weaver is greatly and unavoidably retarded in his progress. It is considered to amount to a very good day's work, when as much as one yard of plain velvet has been woven. For this the workman is usually paid five times the price charged for weaving gros-de-naples.

The warp and pile of velvet are both composed of organzine silk, and it is evident that its richness depends upon the relative number of its pile threads; the manufacturers are accordingly accustomed to designate velvets of different degrees of richness, as velvet of two, four, or six threads, according to the number of pile threads which are inserted between each of the dents of the reed.

An inferior description of velvet has of late years been composed of cotton. One of the principal uses to which this is applied, is that of ornamenting articles of household furniture, such as window hangings, which are not exposed to close inspection, or subjected to much wear, the difference of quality between it and silk velvet being immediately discernible.

Velvet is sometimes woven with stripes which run in the direction of the shoot, and which are produced, at regular intervals, by leaving uncut such a number of loops of the pile as are sufficient to make up the breadth of the intended stripe. The wire employed for forming these uncut loops is unlike that described, being of a simple cylindrical form: the appearance of velvet thus woven is rich and pleasing.

It has been already said that velvets should be manufactured throughout, warp, shoot, and pile, of soft organzined silk. This condition is not, however, always adhered to by foreign weavers of velvet; and, in particular, some goods have been brought to this country from Germany, the pile of which is composed of what is called souple, which is silk

dyed in the gum. By the employment of this article, which contains an admixture of foreign matter, a less quantity of silk is made to suffice in forming the pile; but it is evident that the apparent richness will soon disappear, and the real inferiority of quality attendant upon this procedure will manifest itself to the wearer after only a very short acquaintance with his purchase.

CHAP. VII.

GAUZE WEAVING.

Its Origin.-Structure.-Peculiarity of Arrangements in Weaving it.Mode of putting these in Action.-Difficulty of the Process.-Superiority of the French in Gauze Weaving.-Accounted for.

GAUZE is a very light and transparent fabric. The etymology of its name has caused it to be conjectured that we are indebted for its invention to Gaza, a city of Palestine, on the frontiers of Egypt, which, although now of only small extent, was formerly a place of considerable magnitude and celebrity. The manufacture of silk gauzes was, some years ago, very extensively prosecuted in the district of Spitalfields, but has of late been almost wholly discontinued in that quarter, and is principally transplanted to Paisley, near Glasgow, and the neighboring villages in the counties of Lanark and Renfrew.

The particular arrangements used in the production of this tasteful fabric are known among the craft under the title of cross-weaving. In all the species of interlacings hitherto described, whatever the order of succession wherein the warp threads may be alternately raised and depressed, they always remain parallel to each other, and without twisting or crossing; whereas it is the essential character of gauze, that between each cast of the shuttle such a crossing of the warp threads shall ensue, as while it admits of each shoot being in its turn struck up by the batten with the degree of force necessarily required to impart to it stability and regularity, yet prevents its being carried thereby into absolute contact with the shoot immediately preceding; the intervals thus left between the interlacings causing that degree of transparency, which, without these crossings, could only result from a looseness of texture altogether incompatible with beauty and utility.

In the following diagram, the unshaded cross lines must U

be taken to represent the shoot, while the twisted lines, whereby they are intersected and embraced, are descriptive of the warp threads. It is evident that the twisting thus given must effectually prevent the too close approximating of the successive shoots, without being in any respect incompatible with the needful regularity of their positions, or with a due degree of stability. The diagram is necessarily drawn upon an exaggerated scale, in order to render the peculiarity of the fabric at once apparent upon inspection.

Fig. 28.

To produce the appearance here given, it is not necessary that the adjoining warp threads should be actually crossed at each casting of the shuttle, as the return of the threads from the crossed to the parallel state will have the same effect as giving a reversed crossing. The twistings are made alternately to the right and the left hand; and each twist, as it is produced, is kept by the striking up of the shoot with

the batten.

It would not be possible, within the necessary limits, and without having recourse to numerous drawings, to communicate with sufficient clearness all the minutiae of arrangement upon which gauze weaving is made to depend. It will, perhaps, suffice to impart a general idea of the principle upon which it is conducted.

The mounting of a gauze-loom consists of four heddles, or leaves of heddles, and of two half leaves. In order to produce the twist in forming the shed, the warp threads do not rise and sink alternately, or at regular intervals, as in plain weaving or in twilling, one thread being always raised, and the other thread as constantly depressed. The raised thread is drawn through the third leaf of heddles, and as it always rises, is not taken through the loop of the heddle or the mail, but above it, through what the weavers usually call the upper doup. The other thread is drawn through the fourth leaf of heddles, and because it always sinks, is drawn through its under doup. One of the two half leaves is hung from above,

and the other is attached below. That from above passes through the lower doup of one standard; and the other half leaf, which is attached below, passes through the upper doup of the second standard. The raised warp thread is drawn through the under half leaf connected with its standard, and the other thread passes through the upper half leaf connected with its standard. The alternate crossings of the warp threads are occasioned by the action of the half leaves.

The heddles and standards are moved by two treadles, the depression of which in this mode of weaving calls for more than the ordinary amount of exertion; especially when the weather is damp, the labor is so much increased that the weaver can make only slow progress with his work. Another evil attending this kind of weaving is, that the increased friction to which the silk threads are subjected occasions them very frequently to break-much more frequently than in any other kind of weaving-and the arrangements render their repair a much more troublesome operation. To remedy this, it was usual formerly to pass the warp threads through the eyes of glass beads; but this was a troublesome and tedious process, and, joined to the difficulty of properly confining the beads, has induced the weavers to discontinue their employment.

Gauze is one of the very few articles of silk manufacture in which it is held that the French weavers still bear away the palm from ours; a fact which is, doubtless, referrible to the lower rate of wages paid on the other side of the Channel. The weight of silk contained in a yard of gauze is very trifling; and the value of the material bears a much smaller proportion to that of the labor consumed in its conversion, than is borne by weightier fabrics.

CHAP. VIII.

BROCADE, DAMASK, ETC.

Gold and Silver Brocade.-Metallic Threads.-Gilt and Silvered Paper.Damasquitte.-Machinery employed in its Production.-Method of restoring Tarnished Brocade.-Silk Brocade, Damask.-Its Manufacture brought to England.-Mode of Manufacture.-Cafard Damask.-Persian. -Sarsnet.-Gros-de-Naples. - Du Cape.-Satin.-Crape.-Levantine.Gros-des-Indes.-Watering.-Embossing, Mixed Goods. Bombazins.

Poplins.-Lustres.-Shawls.

THE highly ornamented and rich brocades in which our great-grandmothers used to find such delight have now en

tirely disappeared from use, and, indeed, scarcely exist for us, except in the verses of our poets or the essays of satirists of those days. It would be useless, therefore, to attempt giving a description of the mode of manufacturing articles so apparently consigned to oblivion, if it were not for the probability that, in some of the ceaseless mutations of fashion, these sumptuous fabrics may yet once again lay claim to admiration in our drawing-rooms, to the exclusion of the less substantial and less gaudy finery with which the fickle leaders of public taste are now satisfied.

In ancient times, those cloths only were called brocades which were woven, both in the warp and shoot, with gold or silver threads, or with a mixture or combination of both these materials. In preparing the threads for manufacturing gold brocade, a flattened silver-gilt wire or riband was spun on silk that had been dyed, to resemble as nearly as possible the color of the metal; and the principal excellence in the art of preparing gold threads consisted in so regulating the convolutions of the metallic covering of the silk, as that its edges should exactly touch, and form, as it were, one continued casing, without either interval or overlapping.

At the time when the weaving of these golden tissues was encouraged by public taste, the manufacture of the threads, whence they were produced, had arrived at a high degree of excellence. At Milan there was a considerable manufactory, in which, by a secret process, flatted wire was made, having only one side covered with gilding. Threads of an inferior description were also made, chiefly at Nuremberg, by spinning gilt copper wire upon threads of either flax or hemp; and the Chinese, still more economical, used slips of gilt paper, which they twisted upon silk, and sometimes even introduced into their stuffs, without thus giving to the paper any fibrous support. But these productions could have boasted, at best, only an evanescent beauty; and, accordingly, we learn from Du Halde, the historian of China, that golden tissues were rarely used in that country, except for tapestries, or other ornamental substances, which were but little exposed to view, and could be effectually protected from mois

ture.

In process of time, silken threads, uncovered with metallic wires, were used to form the plain ground of brocades, upon which gold or silver flowers, or other ornaments, were raised; and at a still later period, fabrics composed entirely of uncovered silk, provided they were adorned and worked