Drape / drapery

Drapery refers to pieces of cloth or textiles that hang in specific positions mainly for decoration. The drape of a material merely describes the way that material falls, folds or hangs.

In buildings it normally refers to textiles that hang around a window reveal or bed for example. Drapery is also used to describe loose clothing and how if falls over the human form. It was an important element of early artworks, such as shawls, head scarfs and loin cloths that featured heavily from the Greek to the Renaissance periods, particularly in sculptural pieces.

Today the term drapery or drapes might be used instead of curtains, however drapery specifically refers to the act of falling and folding whereas a curtain refers to the material and its function. The early curtains of the Egyptians in around 3100 B.C, made of animal hides to hang in doorways, were more akin to drapery as they hung in a fixed position, rather than being moveable as with curtains. The specific styles of pleat in different types of curtains, such as pencil, pinch or globlet pleats might be more readily referred to as drapery, because the focus of these is the fall or drape of the fabric.

Window scarves or valances are also forms of drapery.

[edit] Related articles on Designing Buildings

• Curtains.
• Daylit space.
• Pelmet.
• Textiles.
• Types of blinds.
• Types of curtains.
• Valance.