The sound of a brocade loom is a sequence rather than a beat. The shuttle passes, the beater closes, and between those two the draw boy lifts selected warps by hand to let the extra weft through.
That is the difference between Kadhuan and jacquard brocade. In Kadhuan the figure is created at the loom by manual warp lifting, which is why the reverse of the cloth shows the loose extra weft. In jacquard, the lifting is programmed by a card or a head, and the piece can be produced faster and more evenly.
The cost of hand-drawing is area per day. A dense figure with many colour changes is slower than a sparse one, and a weaver working a bespoke colourway may need to re-tension the warp before starting, which is a lost day on a long order.
Our velvet throws and gauze throws in the current records are cotton and cotton-slub pieces with printed surfaces, not brocades, and we list them that way rather than borrowing the silk story. The stole and print cloth records carry the handloom language where the deck states it.
If you are buying brocade, ask three questions: is the figure Kadhuan or jacquard, how many extra wefts are in the repeat, and what is the daily output on the loom that will run your order. The answers change the date and the price more than the design does.
The recording itself is the least technical part of the piece and the most useful. Two people at one frame, working in a rhythm that has not changed since the drawboy, is the clearest possible evidence of why a hand-drawn brocade cannot be produced to a printed-cloth calendar.
In Kadhuan the figure is lifted by hand, thread by thread, at the loom.
