Cloth of Gold: Brocade in the Royal Courts of Europe

August 09, 2026 Khinkhwab Team

For a thousand years, one cloth meant power above all others in Europe: brocade — silk woven with threads of real gold and silver. To wear it was to announce that you were a king.

✨ Fun fact: When Henry VIII of England and Francis I of France met in 1520, their tents, gowns and horses were so heavily draped in gold-woven silk that the meeting place was named the “Field of the Cloth of Gold.”

European bizarre silk brocade woven with silver and coloured silk early 18th century Metropolitan Museum — European “bizarre” silk brocaded with silver and coloured silk, early 18th century. Metropolitan Museum of Art (Public Domain). The gold and silver thread woven into silk — the same technique as our *kamkhwab*, translated into the European taste of the age.

Byzantium and the imperial purple

The story begins in Byzantium. In the imperial workshops of Constantinople, weavers made silks shot with gold so precious that the very richest — the purple-and-gold cloths — were reserved for the emperor alone. Cloth had become a crown.

Cloth of gold

From this came the medieval idea of cloth of gold: brocade in which gold-wrapped thread was woven into silk until the fabric seemed to be made of light. Kings were crowned in it; bishops said Mass in it; the great were buried in it. It is the exact European counterpart of the gold-wrapped kalabatun that runs through a kamkhwab to this day.

Italian Renaissance gold brocade velvet silk 15th century Metropolitan Museum — Italian Renaissance silk brocade, 15th century. Metropolitan Museum of Art (Public Domain). The looms of Lucca, Venice and Florence wove these gold-shot silks for Europe’s courts and altars — the same impulse that produced kamkhwab in Banaras.

The looms of Italy

By the Renaissance, the finest cloths came from Italy. The looms of Lucca, Venice, Florence and Genoa wove sumptuous brocades and crimson velvets — the very cloths you see draped over princes and Madonnas in Renaissance paintings.

The Field of the Cloth of Gold

No moment captured this better than the summit of 1520, when the kings of England and France met near Calais. Each tried to outshine the other in brocade and gold — pavilions, banners, clothing glittering with it — until the place itself was christened the Field of the Cloth of Gold.

The thread we love

While Europe’s kings robed themselves in cloth of gold, the emperors of India did exactly the same in kamkhwab — the Banarasi brocade we still weave by hand today.

Handwoven Banarasi Katan Silk Kadwa Jangla saree with gold zari — Khinkhwab — The same idea, still on the loom: a handwoven Banarasi *kamkhwab*, gold *zari* carried through the silk. Europe called it cloth of gold; Banaras calls it kamkhwab.

Explore our handwoven gold-and-silver brocade in the Brocade Fabric collection.

Frequently asked questions

What is cloth of gold?

A luxurious brocade woven from silk and gold-wrapped thread, the most precious fabric in medieval and Renaissance Europe, reserved largely for royalty and the Church.