“Black velvet painting is the most-bullied art form in the world,” said Carl Baldwin, founder of the Velveteria Epicenter of Art Fighting Cultural Deprivation Museum when Soolip chatted with him recently by telephone.

Hard times have closed down Baldwin’s Chinatown location in Los Angeles which served as an urban shrine to what he calls “the Rodney Dangerfield of the art world – can’t get no respect.”  Meanwhile, his collection of approximately 5,000 black velvet paintings, including a portrait of Anderson Cooper wearing a thong, and another of late chef Anthony Bourdain perched on a toilet, await an uncertain fate from a storage unit.

Here’s the irony: this vilified “anti-art” form relies upon a medium which has been coveted, cherished and jealously guarded for centuries: velvet.  

Soolip also spoke with Bruce White, a North Carolina tattoo-artist and black-velvet portraitist who describes himself as “educated white trash” and gleefully references The Encyclopedia of Bad Taste: A Celebration of American Pop Culture at Its Most Joyfully Outrageous (Stern, Harper Collins).

White said, “I understand that people think it’s kitschy. Black velvet paintings don’t photograph awfully well, but when you’re in their presence, something unexpected happens: they glow. There is something unearthly and supernatural when they are viewed in real life. It’s not that I am on mission, but I challenge anyone to not be somehow moved when they encounter a black velvet portrait that’s properly lit.”

Textile-historians note that Marco Polo described Hindu gods painted on this pliant, iridescent textile during his travels in India in the 13th century. In medieval times, holy ikons of the Russian Orthodox Church were painted on velvet in the Caucasus Mountains. Centuries later, proper ladies of England and the colonies practiced “theorem paintings”, which consisted of stenciling pleasant still-life subjects onto velvet. 

Then in the 1930s, Edgar Leeteg, called “the American Gauguin” by some, travelled to Tahiti and Hawaii to paint ravishing, bare-breasted island goddesses on velvet. American tourists and GIs snapped them up as souvenirs, and artisans in Mexico quickly followed suit, creating a new North American genre of collectible black velvet art (lots of matadors and ruffled, sloe-eyed señoritas). Black velvet paintings soon appeared on the streets of Saigon, rolled up into soldiers’ duffle-bags as a silken farewell to a nightmare. 

Today, White’s subjects include celebs and favorite gay icons along with WWE hulksters captured in snarling, sweat-drenched detail. Whether depicting a revered saint or a deified pop star, the texture, depth and sheen of the velvet imbues the portrait with an otherworldly aura. The reason lies in the complex structure of the fabric itself. 

Layers of paint dry-brushed on the surface reflect light, while the voluptuous depths of the background absorb it. These optics have been described as evoking the feeling of emerging from the womb, or plunging down a dark corridor toward a radiant source, exactly how many near-death, out-of-body experiences are recalled.

What makes velvet “velvet” is both the weave and the fiber chosen. The word comes to us via the Italian “vellutto”, from the Latin “villus”, meaning a shaggy tuft of hair. Traditional velvet is made with silk, an animal product (from the cocoons of silkworms), perhaps giving some credence to the theory that velvet was originally created in an attempt to replicate the plushness of fur.  Silk velvets feel plump and juicy, like warm skin. Not surprisingly, allowing the yardage to rest and collect moisture is a critical step in traditional velvet weaving.

The weaving technique used is called double-pile. The cloth is woven with two layers, lying face-to-face. The defining step: a sharp blade is passed between the layers on the loom, producing a “cut pile”, or velvet. 

Some velvets, notably ciselé, create textural depth by contrasting cut with uncut loops. Stretching, crushing, hammering, embossing, crimping and using chemicals to “burn” out patterns are some of the other techniques used to add to velvet’s surface appeal. 

The woven cut-pile structure is evident in Egyptian linen fragments dating from 2000 BCE, but the fabric that we recognize as velvet was mastered much  later in China circa 400 BCE. Velvet-making flourished in Turkey, Greece and Cyprus as silk made its way via the trade routes into Spain and Italy, accelerating after the siege of Constantinople in 1204 CE. From there, the craft ascended from merely superhuman skill into the realm of the sublime.

In 1347, refugees from Lucca, many of them weavers, arrived in Venice and formed the Republic of Venice Velvet Weavers. They created what was called the “soprarizzo” method, which means “above the curls.” This sophisticated double-pile technique requires two layers: one to absorb, and one to reflect light. This produced a rippling, wave-like effect when stroked, much like the warm, pliant body of a tame beast. 

The Lucchesi as they were known went beyond mere luxury into the fantastic, adding strands of precious metal and gilded backgrounds to create fabrics that seemed literally divine. Not surprisingly, the Vatican became the world’s most ardent consumer of velvet during the Renaissance.

The pomegranate motif is inherent to the story of velvet. Long before Christianity, this garnet-seeded fruit had been a metaphor for eternal life. For example, in Judaic practice, the pomegranate or Rimon is the symbol of a fruitful, joyful new year. Some Talmudic scholars maintain that the pomegranate contains 613 seeds, because the number (when all the digits are added together) reduces down to one, the One of the Almighty YHWH. And, observant Jews are commanded to honor 613 mitzvoht, or laws, throughout the year.

Ancient Egypt linked the pomegranate with resurrection and immortality, and in Greek myth, Persephone is crowned Mistress of the Underworld because she tasted a few pomegranate seeds from the subterranean orchards of Lord Hades.

But the magic of velvet-making lingered like a fever in one Venice family, named Bevilacqua, Venetian weavers since 1499 CE. In that year, Giovanni Mansueti painted “The Arrest of St. Mark in the Synagogue”, crediting “Giacomo Bevilacqua, weaver” as one of the noblemen who commissioned the piece. This legacy lay fallow for nearly four centuries.

Then in 1875, Luigi Bevilacqua made the daring move to salvage the magnificent old looms used by the Silk Guild of the Republic of Venice, left to rot in the damp lagoon air. He and his partner Giovanni Battista Gianoglio commandeered the abandoned mills and began weaving velvet again, to push back against the cheaper, but less durable wovens spewed out by the new machines.

Today, the Bevilacquas run the oldest tessitura (weaving studio) in Venice, the only one which still uses the soprarizzo technique. Among the oldest designs still in production is the motif called Leoni, depicting two lions guarding the Tree of Life.  Originally Persian in origin, this design is the logo of Tessitura Luigi Bevilacqua. 

Six weavers now navigate the maze of ropes and riggings connecting 18 ancient looms, working from 3,500 unique designs dating as far back as the Middle Ages. The techniques are so complex and painstaking that the weavers can typically only produce 30 to 80 centimeters (between 1 – 3 feet) of velvet a day.

Bevilacqua velvets continue to grace royalty and Roman Catholic clergy, and the family’s yellow-patterned fabric today hangs in the Oval Office of the White House. Velvets intended for upholstery may contain linen and cotton for durability, while the most wildly tactile weaves incorporate yarn spun from deliriously soft goat’s hair.

Back in the Renaissance, rivalries were fierce. During the 16th century, the superiority of the black velvets woven in Genoa was grudgingly acknowledged even by Venetian rivals. Florence was known for its production of velvets with metal bouclé nestled in the lush silk pile. Florentine weavers served the Medici, and specialized in rendering family coats-of-arms and other heraldic motifs in this way. 

The market for luxury textiles was fiercely competitive, and industrial espionage was common. “Then, as now,” says Deborah Young, textile educator and historian at FIDM (Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising) in Los Angeles. Young is also an expert witness in lawsuits regarding textile patterns, and is frequently called upon to examine fabrics involved in copyright infringement disputes.

Soolip spoke with Young by telephone recently on the enduring appeal of velvet. “The fabric is ever evolving and changing,” she said. “There has been a major paradigm-shift.  For apparel, most velvets made today are knits, rather than woven.  This gives the fabric a natural forgiveness, a stretch.  It makes velvet wearable and modern, since everyone’s been living in sweatpants and working from home.”

But was velvet ever really meant to be comfortable? She says, “During the Renaissance, every article of clothing, every accessory and detail of personal appearance was loaded with cultural significance. Class delineations were unapologetically sharp. What you wore and how you wore it sent a coded message that was understood by all. That was its purpose: to clearly announce your place in society. To wear velvet meant that you had arrived, and weren’t embarrassed to let the world know it.”

For this reason, she says, the Italian weavers of five or six centuries ago maintained “…a fanatical secrecy about their work, the thread count, and so much more.” As far as the production value of silk velvet, she notes that “…it takes 100 silkworm cocoons to make a tie, 3,000 or so to make a kimono. It’s not exactly cruelty-free.”  

The sensual rush of velvet on the skin depends upon the doomed silkworm morphing inside its priceless cocoon. And so slipping into a velvet garment becomes an act of transformation.

Photographs of the Luigi Bevilacqua historical headquarters and showroom made possible through the generosity of Luigi Bevilacqua, Venezia, Italy