Cloth merchant

Cloth Merchant's Shop, Brooklyn Museum, depicts an establishment in India.

In the Middle Ages or 16th and 17th centuries, a cloth merchant was one who owned or ran a cloth (often wool) manufacturing or wholesale import or export business. A cloth merchant might additionally have owned 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 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 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 largely obsolete term merchant tailor 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, nowadays a charitable institution best known for the Merchant Taylors' schools - the Company preserves the ancient spelling "taylor" in its name.

Notable cloth merchants

Sewing

Techniques	Basting Cut Darning Ease Embellishment Fabric tube turning Floating canvas Gather Godet Gusset Heirloom sewing Shirring

Stitches	List of sewing stitches Backstitch Bar tack Blanket Blind stitch Buttonhole Catch stitch Chain stitch Cross-stitch Embroidery stitch Hemstitch Lockstitch Overlock Pad stitch Pick stitch Rantering Running Sashiko Stoating Tack Topstitch Zigzag

Seams	Felled seam Seam allowance Style line

Notions Trims	Bias tape Collar stays Elastic Grommet / Eyelet Interfacing Passementerie Piping Ruffle Rickrack Self-fabric Soutache Trim Twill tape Wrights

Closures	Buckle Button Buttonhole Frog Hook-and-eye Hook and loop fastener Shank Snap Zipper

Materials	Bias Yarn / Thread Selvage Textiles / Fabrics

Tools	Bobbin Dress form Needle threader Pattern notcher Pin Pincushion Pinking shears Scissors Seam ripper Sewing needle Stitching awl Tailor's ham Tape measure Thimble Tracing paper Tracing wheel

Trades Suppliers	Cloth merchant Draper Dressmaker Haberdasher Mercer Sewing occupations Tailor

Sewing machine manufacturers	Barthélemy Thimonnier Bernina Brother Industries Elias Howe Feiyue Frister & Rossmann Janome Jones Sewing Machine Company Juki Merrow New Home Pfaff Sewmor Singer Tapemaster Viking / Husqvarna White

Pattern Manufacturers	Butterick Clothkits McCall's Simplicity

Glossary of sewing terms

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Friday, December 18, 2015. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.

Cloth merchant

Notable cloth merchants

See also