Page 22 - Chiense TExtiles, MET MUSEUM Pub 1934

THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART
The few specimens of cotton and felt found among
the Han fragments are not of sufficient importance to be
discussed here.
We come now to the silk fabrics. That these silks were
made in the interior of China cannot be doubted, and
their having been found by the side of the route which
the Chinese first opened for their intercourse with Cen-
tral Asia and the countries of the West makes them
doubly interesting. Two important facts about the Han
silks are to be noted. In those that show no decorative
figuring, a variety of plain cloth weave is always used,
corresponding to what is technically known as a rib, or
rep, weave. The figured silks, with the exception of a
few specimens in monochrome, described as damasks,
and a single example of gauze, are all polychrome, the
colors rich and harmonious and the weaves of exquisite
texture. The warp twill is used in all of these poly-
chrome silks. To make the briefest of explanations of
this weave, the figure or pattern is woven in the vertical
warp threads, and the fabric presents a kind of dull
satin surface, faintly ribbed. This weave appears to have
been purely Chinese and an extremely difficult tech-
nique. The Egyptians, who had known the weft twill
for several centuries, at one time apparently tried to imi-
tate the Chinese warp twill by turning their designs side-
wise for weaving, but without satisfactory results. By the
T'ang dynasty the Chinese had learned the weft twill
weave and, since it was far more practical for figured
silks than the laborious warp twill technique, they dis-
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