Brooklyn Museum - Cloth Merchant's Shop - Basarat

In the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...

or 16th and 17th centuries, a cloth merchant was one who owned or ran a cloth (often

wool Wool is the textile fibre obtained from sheep and other mammals, especially goats, rabbits, and camelids. The term may also refer to inorganic materials, such as mineral wool and glass wool, that have properties similar to animal wool. As ...

) manufacturing or wholesale import or export business. A cloth merchant might additionally own a number of draper's shops. Cloth was extremely expensive and cloth merchants were often very wealthy. A number of Europe's leading banking dynasties such as

Medici The House of Medici ( , ) was an Italian banking family and political dynasty that first began to gather prominence under Cosimo de' Medici, in the Republic of Florence during the first half of the 15th century. The family originated in the Muge ...

and Berenberg built their original fortunes as cloth merchants. In England, cloth merchants might be members of one of the important trade guilds, such as the Worshipful Company of Drapers. Alternative names are clothier, which tended to refer more to someone engaged in

production Production may refer to: Economics and business * Production (economics) * Production, the act of manufacturing goods * Production, in the outline of industrial organization, the act of making products (goods and services) * Production as a stati ...

and the sale of cloth, whereas a cloth merchant would be more concerned with distribution, including overseas trade, or haberdasher, who were merchants in sewn and fine fabrics (e.g. silk) and in London, members of the

Haberdashers' Company The Worshipful Company of Haberdashers, one of the Great Twelve City Livery Companies, is an ancient merchant guild of London, England associated with the silk and velvet trades. History and functions The Haberdashers' Company follows the M ...

. The largely obsolete term merchant taylor also describes a business person who trades in textiles, and initially a tailor who keeps and sells materials for the garments which he makes. In England, the term is best known in the context of the Worshipful Company of Merchant Taylors, one of the livery companies of the

City of London The City of London is a city, ceremonial county and local government district that contains the historic centre and constitutes, alongside Canary Wharf, the primary central business district (CBD) of London. It constituted most of London fr ...

, nowadays a charitable institution best known for the Merchant Taylors' schools – the Company preserves the ancient spelling "taylor" in its name.

Notable cloth merchants

* Alderman Robert Aske * Sir William Gardiner * John Kendrick *

Henry Machyn Henry Machyn (1496/1498 – 1563) was an English clothier and diarist in 16th century London. Machyn's ''Chronicle'', which was written between 1550 and 1563, is primarily concerned with public events: changes on the throne, state visits, in ...

, diarist *

Jack O'Newbury "Jack of Newbury" or John Winchcombe, also known as John Smallwood (c. 1489 −1557) was a leading English clothier from Newbury in Berkshire. When Tudor cloth-making was booming, and woollen cloth dominated English exports, John Winchcombe wa ...

* William Paterson *

Thomas Spring of Lavenham Thomas Spring (c. 1474 – 1523), (''alias'' Thomas Spring III or The Rich Clothier), of Lavenham in Suffolk, was an English people, English cloth merchant.Phil W Kaufman, ''American Traces in Anglian Places'' (Lulu.com), 19. He consolidated h ...

* Sir Thomas White

Notable cloth merchants

See also