damask

Upstairs, the silk damask draperies, crystal chandeliers and sumptuous beds feel opulent and the rooms are simply huge.

“Life and death and bloodlines and damask. Wonderful,” wrote Jonathan Foyle, a British academic, on social media.

We looked around the gentlemen’s smoking room to see if a cat’s eyes glowed from under the furniture, behind the damask drapes.

Peeters’s “Still Life with Crabs, Shrimps and Lobsters” purportedly contains religious references, depicting foods allowed during the Lenten season as well as a scene of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac woven into the blue damask tablecloth.

According to one biography of Martha Washington, “Pieces of fabric cut from her dresses and passed down through the family as mementos are a beautiful assortment of lampas and damask silks—white with red and pink roses, pale ivory with narrow ivory stripes and delicate bouquets.”