This chapter is devoted to the linen and silk fabrics used in the production of medieval ceremonial textiles, and the techniques employed to create the embroidered and woven patterns that embellished them. As we have already seen, the elegance of ceremonial textiles in antiquity is revealed in the use in early sources of the term shira’in na’in (‘fine fabrics’), which connotes a concern for aesthetic values in religious observance. The colourful coverings for Torah scrolls from ancient times are proof in themselves that their donors were careful to choose splendid materials.

But what are splendid materials? Since the earliest times it has been traditional in the East for the quality of a fabric to depend upon the material from which it is made, its colourfulness, and its design. This is reflected in the biblical description of the Tabernacle: ‘As for the Tabernacle, make it of ten strips of cloth; make these of fine twisted linen, of blue, purple, and crimson yarns, with a design of cherubim worked into them’ (Exod. 26: 1). The cherub design on these lengths of cloth was achieved using the technique of ma’aseh ḥoshev. This term has been interpreted in various ways, but Rashi seems to have been correct in interpreting it to mean that the design took shape during the weaving of the cloth: ‘The design was woven directly in—not embroidered on it afterwards with a needle, but woven on both sides.’ More information about the technique used to decorate fabrics can be found in the biblical description of the making of the ephod, one of the vestments of the high priest: ‘They hammered out sheets of gold and cut threads to be worked into designs among the blue, the purple, and the crimson yarns, and the fine linen’ (Exod. 39: 3). This passage implies that beaten gold thread was woven in at the same time as the linen and the wool thread. But whereas the curtains of the Tabernacle and the parokhet, which separated the holiness of the Tabernacle from the sacred enclave within it known as the Holy of Holies, were ornamented using the technique of weaving, embroidery was used to add a design to the screen that hung at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting: