Camlet, also commonly known as camelot or camblet, is a woven fabric

Textile

A textile or cloth is a flexible woven material consisting of a network of natural or artificial fibres often referred to as thread or yarn. Yarn is produced by spinning raw fibres of wool, flax, cotton, or other material to produce long strands...

 that might have originally been made of camel

Camel hair

Camel hair is, variously, the hair of a camel; a type of cloth made from camel hair; or a substitute for authentic camel hair; and is classified as a specialty hair fibre. When woven into haircloth, using the outer protective fur called guard hair, camel hair is coarse and inflexible...

 or goat

Goat

The domestic goat is a subspecies of goat domesticated from the wild goat of southwest Asia and Eastern Europe. The goat is a member of the Bovidae family and is closely related to the sheep as both are in the goat-antelope subfamily Caprinae. There are over three hundred distinct breeds of...

's hair, now chiefly of goat's hair and silk

Silk

Silk is a natural protein fiber, some forms of which can be woven into textiles. The best-known type of silk is obtained from the cocoons of the larvae of the mulberry silkworm Bombyx mori reared in captivity...

, or of wool

Wool

Wool is the textile fiber obtained from sheep and certain other animals, including cashmere from goats, mohair from goats, qiviut from muskoxen, vicuña, alpaca, camel from animals in the camel family, and angora from rabbits....

 and cotton

Cotton

Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective capsule, around the seeds of cotton plants of the genus Gossypium. The fiber is almost pure cellulose. The botanical purpose of cotton fiber is to aid in seed dispersal....

. The original form of this cloth was very valuable; the term later came to be applied to imitations of the original eastern fabric.

In the 18th century, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

, Holland, and Flanders

Flanders

Flanders is the community of the Flemings but also one of the institutions in Belgium, and a geographical region located in parts of present-day Belgium, France and the Netherlands. "Flanders" can also refer to the northern part of Belgium that contains Brussels, Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp...

 were the chief places of its manufacture; Brussels

Brussels

Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...

 exceeded them all in the beauty and quality of its camlets, followed by England.

A variety of terms have been used for camlet in different forms:

• Figured camlets are of one color, on which are stamped various figures, flowers, foliages, etc. The figures were applied with hot irons, passed together with the fabric, under a press. In the 18th century, these were chiefly brought from Amiens
  Amiens
  Amiens is a city and commune in northern France, north of Paris and south-west of Lille. It is the capital of the Somme department in Picardy...
  
   and Flanders
  Flanders
  Flanders is the community of the Flemings but also one of the institutions in Belgium, and a geographical region located in parts of present-day Belgium, France and the Netherlands. "Flanders" can also refer to the northern part of Belgium that contains Brussels, Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp...
  
  . In antiquity, figured camlets were much more sought after than in modern times.
• Water camlets, after weaving, received a certain preparation with water; and were afterwards passed under a hot press, giving them a smoothness and lustre.
• Waved camlets feature impressed waves, as on tabbies.

Manufacturers of camlets had to take care not to introduce any unnecessary pleats in the fabric, as they were almost impossible to undo. This difficulty was so notorious, that a proverb existed, stating that someone "is like a camlet—he has taken his pleat."

Etymology

The origin of the term is uncertain. While certain authors reference camlets as originally being made of camel hair, others believe it is from the Arabic seil el kemel, the Angora goat

Angora goat

The Angora goat is a breed of domestic goat that originated in Ankara , Turkey and its surrounding region in central Anatolia...

.

Ménage

Gilles Ménage

Gilles Ménage was a French scholar.He was born at Angers, the son of Guillaume Ménage, king's advocate at Angers, where Gilles was born....

 derived the word from zambelot, a Levant

Levant

The Levant or ) is the geographic region and culture zone of the "eastern Mediterranean littoral between Anatolia and Egypt" . The Levant includes most of modern Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, the Palestinian territories, and sometimes parts of Turkey and Iraq, and corresponds roughly to the...

ine term for stuffs made with the fine hair of a Turkish goat, probably the Angora goat, from which comes the term Turkish camelot. Bochart

Samuel Bochart

Samuel Bochart was a French Protestant biblical scholar, a student of Thomas Erpenius and the teacher of Pierre Daniel Huet...

claimed zambelot was a corruption from Arabic. Others called it capellote, from capelle, she-goat. Still others have sourced camelot from the bare Latin camelus, so that camelot should properly signify a fabric made of camel hair.