Paduasoy

Paduasoy or padesoy[1] (pronounced /ˈpædjuː.əsɔɪ/) (French: peau de soie) is a luxurious strong corded or grosgrain silk textile that originated in Early Modern Europe. The term paduasoy first appeared in English in 1663.[2]

Paduasoy silk was woven in a variation of the satin weave, with bindings arranged to create fine cross-ridges across the fabric.[3] In the British East India Company supercargoes' records, examined by Leanna Lee-Whitman, paduasoy made its first appearance in 1736.[4] Its fine appearance is endorsed in a letter of Mrs. Benjamin Franklin to her husband in London, in 1765: "The chairs are plain horsehair and look as well as Paduasoy."[5] In the British East India records consulted by Leanna Lee-Whitman, black paduasoys completely supplanted "plain" ones after 1761:[6] George Washington commissioned a friend, Tench Tilghman to purchase numerous household items, "if great bargains are to be had", from the cargo of a ship in the China trade that had docked at Baltimore and were to be auctioned in October 1785: among his requests, if they could be had cheaply, were "About 13 yds of good bla: paduasoy".[7] Beatrix Potter employed paduasoy to set the old-fashioned scene in The Tailor of Gloucester, which begins, "In the time of swords and periwigs and full-skirted coats with flowered lappets—when gentlemen wore ruffles, and gold-laced waistcoats of paduasoy and taffeta—there lived a tailor in Gloucester.[8]

In Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford (1851), an old white paduasoy wedding dress longed for by Miss Matty's mother has been recut into a christening cloak for a baby.[9]

The original French term, peau de soie, is once again part of the English vernacular.

Notes

  1. ^ Deborah Franklin used the phonetic spelling "padeysway" in 1737 (University of Delaware, The Accounts of Benjamin Franklin Through 1747).
  2. ^ OED, s.v. "Paduasoy"; the deformation of a "Padua say", a kind of serge from Padua (OED) intends an undeserved connection to "silk of Padua". This has misled the unwary: "She was attired in a robe of the rich silk of Padua known as paduasoy, of a soft lustrous texture, shot with threads of silver" (Isabella MacFarlane, A Royal Knight: A Tale of Nuremberg 1905).
  3. ^ According to Leanna Lee-Whitman, "The Silk Trade: Chinese Silks and the British East India Company", Winterthur Portfolio, 17.1 (Spring 1982:21-41), esp. pp 30f.
  4. ^ Lee-Whitman 1982:30.
  5. ^ Quoted in R. T. Haines Halsey, "Textiles as Furnishings in Early American Homes Textiles as Furnishings in Early American Homes", The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 19.6 (June 1924:148-151) p. 151.
  6. ^ Leanna Lee-Whitman 1982:31.
  7. ^ Quoted in The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 40.4 (1916:460)
  8. ^ "Terms for fabric consume the first pages of Tailor of Gloucester", observes H. Field, "A Few of the Author's Favorite Things: Clothes, Fetishism, and The Tailor of Gloucester" The Lion and the Unicorn, 2010.
  9. ^ Cranford, "Old Letters".