Plate No. 138fabric
The felted nap of the card and billiard table.
- First documented
- 1500s
- Origin
- Flanders and England, United Kingdom
- Fiber
- wool
- Weave
- napped, felted woolen
- Family
- pile
Plate No. 138 · fabric
Baize
Baize is a coarse woolen cloth with a soft, raised, felted nap, most familiar today in a single iconic form: the green covering of billiard, snooker, and card tables, and the cloth of pinboards and the cushioned green baize door that separated servants from masters in grand houses. Brought to England by Flemish weavers among the new draperies of the sixteenth century, it was once a broad utility cloth made in many colors, but the smooth, quiet, dense green surface that grips a rolling ball is what fixed its name in the language.
Named for
From the older English bays, a plural treated as singular, from the French baies, names of a coarse woollen cloth brought by Flemish weavers.