Winner of the Best Books on Devon's History: Academic Award from the Devon History Society 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.

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 *
Taken as a whole, this handsomely-produced and very readable volume adds significantly to what was previously known about Devon clothmaking and can serve as a comprehensive handbook for those coming to the subject for the first time. -- Local Historian

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.