• n. A term with different origins, partly a borrowing from the Latin "taffata" and the French "taffetas", and from the Persian "tāfta". It refers to a specific type of warp-faced plain weave fabric. A fine, crisp, and lustrous fabric in which the weft threads are slightly thicker, which are hidden by densely spaced warps that cover the surface, creating visible ribs across the width of the fabric. It is originally made of silk and later also of silk mixes or other fibres as cotton, wool, polyester or nylon.

• Weaving techniques

• Cotton
• Flax
• Plain weave fabric

• Burnham, Dorothy. Warp and Weft. A Textile Terminology. Royal Ontario Museum, 1980. Simpson, John; Weiner, Edmund (eds). The Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford : Clarendon Press; Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. [www.oed.com]; Phipps, Elena. Looking at Textiles. A guide to technical terms. Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2011

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