The Exeter Cloth Dispatch Book, 1763-1765

Edited by Todd Gray

Description
Contents
Author
Reviews

A richly illustrated exploration of the national and international importance of the early modern Exeter cloth trade.

This book reproduces a newly discovered manuscript detailing the exports of Claude Passavant, a Swiss émigré merchant. Passavant's dispatch book comprises the most extensive surviving collection of Devon cloth with 2,475 surviving cloth samples. Thirteen chapters discuss the local and wider contexts of eighteenth-century cloth making. This study explores the quality, range, and vibrancy of cloth that lead to Exeter becoming an internationally renowned centre for the manufacture and trade of woollen cloth.

Introduction
CLAUDE PASSAVANT AND EXETER
Claude Passavant
Exeter in the 1760s
CLOTH MANUFACTURE
Claude Passavant's dispatch book: an analysis
Exeter's cloth merchants and industry in the 1760s
The Incorporation of Fullers, Weavers and Shearmen, in 1764
Exeter's fulling mills in the mid eighteenth century
The archaeology of the cloth industry in Exeter
Cloth dyes and dyeing in the eighteenth century
An outline history of the Exeter dyers
Exeter lead cloth merchants' seals - a provisional listing
Tillet blocks
CLOTH
Tiverton's woollen cloth trade in the 1760s
Sandfords
PATTERN BOOKS
Westcountry pattern books
Norwich pattern books, pattern cards and patterns
Folding pattern cards: marketing Lancashire fustians in the 1780s
THE DISPATCH BOOK
Appendix 1: The Topsham bale book, 1763
Appendix 2: The cloth account of John Hern of Ashburton, 1771-76
Appendix 3: Letter of Claude Passavant to Henry Pelham, 16 October 1752
Appendix 4: Letter of John Siper to Thomas Windeatt, 5 July 1756
Appendix 5: Four Devon dye recipes, c.1710

TODD GRAY MBE is Research Fellow at the University of Exeter and the author or editor of a number of volumes on Exeter and Devon including William Birchynshaw's Map of Exeter, 1743 and The Chronicle of Exeter, 1205-1722.

"a well rounded detailed study of various aspects of the wool trade and cloth production in Exeter and surrounding area, based on a variety of sources, placing Exeter and Devon in comparison to other English textile centres of the period like Norfolk or Manchester." The Journal of Dress History