Noun

Singular damask

Plural damasks

damask (plural damasks)

1. An ornate silk fabric originating from Damascus.

   True damasks are pure silk.

   • 1836, Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers

     […] but what struck Tom's fancy most was a strange, grim-looking, high backed chair, carved in the most fantastic manner, with a flowered damask cushion, and the round knobs at the bottom of the legs carefully tied up in red cloth, as if it had got the gout in its toes.

2. A damask rose.
3. (color/colour) A grayish-pink color, like that of the damask rose.

   damask colour:

   • 1849, Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

     Thursday. D. certainly improved. Better night. Slight tinge of damask revisiting cheek.

Adjective

damask

1. (color/colour) of a grayish-pink color, like that of the damask rose.
   • 1973, Stephen Sondheim, Sweeney Todd

     My cage has many rooms / Damask and dark / Nothing there sings, / Not even my lark.

Quotations

• 1602: But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud, / Feed on her damask cheek — William Shakespeare, Twlefth Night
• 1849: They had a lurking suspicion even, that he died of secret love; though I must say there was a picture of him in the house with a damask nose, which concealment did not appear to have ever preyed upon. — Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

Damask (Arabic: دمسق‎) is a reversible figured fabric of silk, wool, linen, cotton, or synthetic fibers, with a pattern formed by weaving. Damasks are woven with one warp yarn and one weft yarn, usually with the pattern in warp-faced satin weave and the ground in weft-faced or sateen weave. Twill damasks include a twill-woven ground or pattern.

History

Damasks were one of the five basic weaving techniques of the Byzantine and Islamic weaving centres of the early Middle Ages, and derive their name from their supposed origin in the city of Damascus, Syria. Damasks were scarce after the ninth century outside of Islamic Spain, but were revived in some places in the thirteenth century. By the fourteenth century, damasks were being woven on draw looms in Italy. From the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, most damasks were woven in a single colour, with a glossy warp-faced satin pattern against a duller ground. Two-colour damasks had contrasting colour warps and wefts, and polychrome damasks added gold and other metallic threads or additional colors as supplemental brocading wefts. Medieval damasks were usually woven in silk, but wool and linen damasks were also woven.