Baize is a coarse woollen or wool-and-cotton cloth with a felted, napped surface, most familiar in its traditional bright green colour. It is used to line card tables, writing slopes, desks, cutlery drawers and boxes, and to cover billiard tables and the backs of service doors.
The cloth was introduced to England by Flemish and Dutch weavers in the sixteenth century and became a standard material for furniture linings during the Georgian period, when card playing was a fashionable pastime. Folding card tables of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were usually lined with green baize, which gave a soft surface for cards and counters, while writing tables and desks sometimes used baize instead of leather. The green baize door, separating the family rooms from the servants' quarters, became a symbol of the country-house household. Original baize on antique furniture is often faded, moth-eaten or stained, and is commonly replaced as part of sympathetic restoration. A good replacement should match the colour and texture of period baize and be fitted neatly, without disturbing any surviving original edging or veneers.
