Though normally viewed as a traditional pattern, Damask simply is not one thing. The many centuries-old patterns native to the Middle East that experienced heydays in the Middle Ages and Victorian eras in Europe, and ever since, has been a shorthand for luxurious traditional style. Manufacturers of textiles and wallcoverings have played with the interlocking or repeating botanical motif essential to the pattern to create fresh takes on Damasks that run the style gambit. Micro and macro scales lend the pattern an abstraction that brings it to the contemporary realm. Painterly brush strokes and worn textures add an air of whimsical nostalgia. Boldly colored grounds on silklike fabrics stay true to tradition. Large-scale, leafy, embossed patterns on leather reference the luxury of old-world, hand-tooled leather. In every version, Damask is as timeless as it is timely, and always evocative of the luxury of a bygone era.