Every pattern has a paper trail.

Gingham, denim, paisley: every named cloth was first woven somewhere, named for something, and carried a route to reach us. Here is that record, with the geometry of each pattern rendered from its own specification, and a source under every claim.

Today’s specimen

Plate No. 113 · fabric

Alpaca

Alpaca is cloth from the fleece of the alpaca, a domesticated camelid of the high Andes bred for fiber for thousands of years. Unlike sheep's wool it carries no lanolin, so it is hypoallergenic and needs less processing, and it grows in a wide range of natural colors from white through fawn to deep brown and black.

First documented Antiquity · Peru

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