This text is a general introduction to the history of the Norwich Shawls industry and is adapted from the text to the ‘Style and Splendour’ exhibition, Norwich Castle Museum, 1995, written by Fiona Strodder.

Context: the textiles industry in Norwich

Norwich was an important centre of textile manufacture from medieval times, with its golden age in the mid-18th century. At that time colourful worsted stuffs were popular in Britain and across the world. When these fabrics became less popular in the 19th century, local weavers turned to making patterned shawls. Textile production had dominated the city's economy and made Norwich prosperous. The textile trade began to decline in the late 18th century. Foreign wars, trouble at home, the rapid expansion of the cotton industry and increased mechanisation in other parts of the country were all important factors.

Fortunately, new businesses were developed which brought new life to the textile trade in the 19th century. The manufacture of Norwich shawls was one of the most important of these, and it helped to sustain Norwich's textile business into the late 19th century.

The origins of the shawl

Shawls were first widely produced in the Kashmir, India. They were imported into Britain in the late 18th century, and were very expensive. Before long, British weavers tried to make shawls of their own in wool to compete with imports from Kashmir The English word 'shawl' comes from the Persian 'shal', meaning a 'type of woven fabric'. The finest shawls were made in Kashmir using the soft fleece of the mountain goat. They were extremely expensive, and were worn mainly by noblemen, draped over the left shoulder and the head.

Kashmir Shawls

Kashmir shawls were woven on hand looms using tapestry twill weave. The weft (horizontal) threads pass over two or three warp (vertical) threads at a time, giving a distinctive diagonal line. Until the end of the 18th century these long rectangular shawls had a decorative border at each end. Narrow vertical borders, woven separately, were stitched down the sides. Each colour was put in with a separate shuttle, and the shawl could sometimes take up to 18 months to weave. It was no wonder they were so precious and expensive.

Many of the design ideas originated in Persia, and the decorative motif most used on the end borders was a Persian/Indian motif known as a 'buta' or 'boteh'. This was first styled as a graceful flower, complete with roots, but the motif changed gradually into a more recognisable cone' or 'pine' shape.

The shawl comes to Britain

The British were quick to become interested in shawls as a fashion garment. During the last quarter of the 18th century, they began to be imported into England. Kashmir shawls were ideally suited to draping over fashionable gowns of the time. Various textile centres also tried to produce a woollen shawl which could compete with the quality of the Kashmir ones. Norwich was at the forefront of this development.

Early years of the Norwich shawl industry

Alderman John Harvey is credited with the introduction of shawl manufacture in Norwich in the 1780s. The city led the way in the race to make a shawl as soft and fine as imported Kashmir ones. Sometimes a combination of wool and silk was used. There were also experiments in blending Spanish and Norfolk wools, in importing mountain goat fleece, and even at naturalising the Kashmir goat in Britain. The design on the very early shawls was often embroidered on rather than woven in. This was generally a quicker and so cheaper method of decoration, especially as children could be employed to do this work.

Early styles and designs

Norwich shawls with woven designs, produced in the early years of the 19th century, were highly valued as a warm and colourful complement to the light cotton dresses of the time. These shawls were either like wide scarves, with plain centres and pine decorated borders, or they were about one yard square, with woven borders and fringes sewn on all round. Woven borders, either narrow of wider, are commonly found.

The Indian design of a pine or cone was used by Norwich shawl‑makers to great advantage: such as the use of pines in formal rows would form the end borders of the long shawl, or cone‑shaped sprays of exotic flowers to cover the central part of a square or rectangular shawl. Patterns were always developing, however, and each year brought new variations.

Workers in the shawl industry

By 1800 the shawl trade was well established and there were some 20 shawl manufacturers named in local directories The industry provided employment for a large number of men, women and children .In the first half of the century most weavers worked from their own homes in parishes near the river Wensum.

Textiles had traditionally suffered from periods of boom and slump and the shawl trade was no exception, it saw a major decline in the second and third decades of the century, mainly due to competition from other parts of the country. By 1826 there were complaints that only one third of the looms in the city were working, wages had fallen and substantial numbers of weavers were destitute. Attempts by the larger manufacturers to introduce new ideas and machinery was strongly resisted in the fear that this could only worsen things for the workforce. Persistence won the day. The 1830s saw a gradual improvement in the trade and the production of particularly beautiful shawls. Gradually those manufacturers who survived won a name for the quality and novelty of their shawl designs. The best fillover designs produced on the draw looms sold at between 12 and 50 guineas. Norwich manufacturers competed at the international trade exhibitions and won the patronage of royalty. Shawls were produced in great variety, size and shape to appeal to all markets, although care was taken to preserve the city’s reputation for quality.

Fillover shawl styles

Fillover shawls were the name given to Norwich shawls woven on the draw loom in the early part of the century. The draw loom allowed more elaborate patterns to be woven than the ordinary hand loom. Fillover shawls were woven face down. The weft (horizontal) threads not needed for the pattern were allowed to float free on the back of the fabric. When the shawl was finished, these floating threads were trimmed off to reduce the weight of the shawl. This left an uneven velvety texture on the back. By contrast, Kashmir shawls had their wefts woven in on the back.

The shawls of the 1830s were typically around 1.5m square with fringes sewn on or knotted on all round or else or large rectangles, with fringes made from the warp (vertical) threads at two ends. They featured wool 'fillover' designs of small blue and red flowers on a plain cream ground. Those of the 1840s had a different feel, with larger flowers in reds, pinks, yellows and greens, either in stripes or in mirror patterns, on a cream, black or red wool and silk ground. The manufacturers Towler and Campin produced the finest quality examples at this time.

Rival trades: Norwich, Edinburgh and Paisley

The pine motif was in highly fashionable and marketable. Other centres of textiles manufacture, most notably Paisley and Edinburgh had developed their own successful variants of the shawl. Since style and technologies were very similar, there was extensive rivalry and numerous examples of piracy of design. The Norwich take on this period was that quality Norwich items were imitated in Scotland more cheaply, with disastrous effects on the price for that particular design. In practice however, there were areas of collaboration as well as competition, and the excellent Norwich dyeing technology was often employed by the Scots. The use of the pine motif is sometimes seen as being synonymous with the Paisley Shawl. The irony of the fact that Norwich shawls are frequently described as ‘Paisley’ is not lost locally!

From 1842 it was possible to protect patterns or designs by registering them at the Public Records Office. Between 1842 and 1849, 315 designs for printed and woven shawls were registered by seven Norwich manufacturers. Photographic copies of these designs, held at Carrow House have enabled us to identify and date several of the shawls in the museum's collection. Sometimes only a small part of the design has been used; in some cases elements from two or three registered designs have been combined in one shawl.

The Norwich dyers

Norwich was well known for the excellence of its dyeing, the reputation of its dyers, and was especially famous for one colour, the ‘Norwich Red.’

The hard water of East Anglia was suited to the dyeing industry, and traditionally the city had been an important centre for madder dyeing, using a plant grown locally. Access to a good water supply was essential and the dyers and bleachers of Norwich set up their workshops next to the bridges and in the small lanes running down to the River Wensum in the north of the city, Fields on the outskirts of the city were used as bleaching greens, where lengths of cloth could be laid out to whiten. The atmosphere in the 19th century dye works was hot and humid. Dyers constantly worked with dangerous chemicals like ammonia, sulphuric acid and chemicals that made the dyes permanent. These were daily hazards for both the dyers and the city's water supply.

‘Norwich Red’

In the first half of the 19th century, dyes were produced from natural substances, plants, lichens and insects. The woad plant, for example, was used for blue and the cochineal beetle was used for red. Dyers kept their own secret recipe books for their formulae for different colours.
The Norwich Red was first referred to as early as 1789, and worsted textiles were sent for dyeing in Norwich from all parts of England. In the early 1 800s, Michael Stark, one of Norwich's best known dyers, succeeded in producing a very fine scarlet which dyed both wool and silk yarns to the same colour. Before this, it was almost impossible to dye mixed yarns a uniform shade.

Synthetic dyes

In 1856, William Henry Perkin produced colours from coal tar, marking the move to synthetic or chemical dyeing. The new dye colours were much brighter and harsher than those obtained from natural substances. The distinctive palettes and patterns of the later 19th century are found in the later surviving pattern books at the Bridewell museums. Mauves, lilacs, sapphire blues and browns alternate with tartan patterns in the volumes featuring woven silks. The brightest colour-ways are associated with furnishing fabrics in rich golds and greens, and multi coloured trims that survive as samples in the Carrow House collections.

Printed Shawls

In the early years of shawl production, block printed designs were used on shawl fabric as outlines for embroidered decoration. As printed patterns of all types gained ground in dress and furnishing fabrics, so the printed shawl patterns began to develop. The heyday for the printing of Norwich shawls was the 1840s and 1850s, when firms like Towler and Campin produced the finest quality summer shawls in light silk fabrics, decorated with designs of swags and garlands. Many printed shawls were made to imitate woven shawls, using more or less the same designs. In 1858, it took one week to weave a shawl, and 20 or 30 shawls could be printed in the same period. So they were generally much cheaper to buy. However, printed lenos (fine silk gauzes) fetched high prices at the top end of the range.

Shawl printing became quite an art form in Norwich. Block prints were favoured for shawls even though roller prints became more common for dress fabrics from the 1830s. To print a design one block was required for each colour. Up to six blocks were used in the printing of Norwich shawls.

Special effects could be achieved by the insertion of tiny pieces of fine flattened copper wire and copper pin heads into the block to give delicate lines and shadows. For some designs a 'lead' block was printed first to give the fine lines of the pattern. These lines were often 'hatched' to imitate a woven shawl before the colours were placed.

The Heyday of the Shawl

In the 1840s there were at least 28 manufacturers producing shawls in the Norwich, and in 1849, one firm, E. & F. Hinde, made 26 different types of shawl, representing a total of 39,000 shawls for one year. During the 1850s, shawl production was at its peak. Norwich was represented at the Great Exhibition of 1851, when a number of businesses entered their finest shawls and won top prizes. In 1855 Queen Victoria is known to have bought two shawls from the Norwich firm of Clabburn Sons & Crisp.

Shopping for Shawls

There were many ways to buy a shawl. Shoppers might go to an Emporium, to a small shop, to a factory or warehouse, or even to an itinerant dealer. In the first half of the century, customers could even select their own centre, fillover design, border and fringe. One advert for William Eastwood, linen draper and shawl manufacturer in 1825, reads as follows "Elegant silk shawls, turnover handkerchiefs, shawl borders. Scarf ends of every colour in shawls, every breadth in borders" Some manufactures had both manufacture and retail establishments in Norwich Caley’s marketed the gorgeous Jacquard shawls produced by Clabburn Sons & Crisp in both Bond Street and Norwich. London Street was the centre of shawl retailing locally.

Use of the Jacquard technology

As early as 1818, French weavers started using Jacquard mechanisms fitted to their looms. This mechanism, driven by a foot pedal, operated a succession of punched cards whose perforations ensured that the correct warp threads were lifted to weave the design. The Jacquard invention did away with the need for a 'draw-boy' who would normally lift the threads for the weaver. It also enabled larger and more complex designs to be woven.

However, the weavers of Norwich were reluctant to adopt the Jacquard loom, fearing for their own livelihoods as hand-weavers. In 1839 it was estimated that only 30 out of 4,684 Norwich weavers were working Jacquard looms. The height of the new loom meant that it was more suited to a factory, and at that time most weavers worked at home. The firm of Willett & Nephew was the first to introduce Jacquard looms in 1830. It was not until the 1850s that they were used more commonly in Norwich, with the firm of Clabburn Son & Crisp producing some of their finest shawls in Jacquard woven designs of the 1850s and 1860s. The Bridewell Museum in Norwich has a Jacquard loom on display, as part of a wider display on the Norwich textiles industry.

The final flourish

Shawls of the 1850s and 1860s were massive. They measured up to 3 yards square or rectangles of about 64" x 128". The designs for the larger shawls often featured elongated pine shapes in a bold flowing style reminiscent of the Art Nouveau movement. Bright fuchsias and jewel-like red, blue, green and gold combinations feature strongly. Both printed and woven shawls were produced. In portraits of the time, they were worn artistically draped indoors and as full-length covering garments outside.

The wide dress styles and crinolines of the middle years of the century had been enhanced by the wearing of a shawl. By 1869 A D Bayne was writing ‘we regret…. that these elegant articles of ladies attire have recently almost entirely out of fashion.’ A comprehensive History of Norwich. The new preference for the bustle had spelled the death-knell for the industry: the shawl couldn’t be made to drape elegantly over a bustle. The 1880s and 1890s saw further casualties, and only a handful of firms remained to take textiles manufacture through to the 20th century.

Nonetheless, many people kept their shawls and found other uses for them. Some shawls were cut up and made into jackets for economy, or into fashionable outer garments more suited to the closer fitting 'bustled' dresses of the 1880s and 1890s Fortunately, sufficient have survived, handed from down the generations to survive to the present day.

Norwich Shawl trades

Many different workers were involved in the making of Norwich shawls. Most notably there were the manufacturers, the weavers, the designers, the dyers, the printers and the fringers. Each had a particular skill or expertise, and together they produced objects of great beauty.

The word 'manufacturer' might mean a large or small concern. Sometimes the manufacturer was the journeyman or master weaver, but a few manufacturers were large employers. Some of these put out work for weavers to do in their own homes, whilst others owned their own factory with machinery. Only the larger manufacturers had their own design teams.

The weaver was a journeyman who had served his apprenticeship from the age of 11 or 12. In the first half of the 19th century, most weavers worked from their own homes, and up to a point the weaver was his own boss. The majority of weavers lived close to each other in parishes near the river. Economic conditions worsened for the weaver during the course of the century. It took an average 5 weeks to prepare a loom for a new design, and the weaver was only paid for what he produced, not for his preparation time.

Most designers worked on a freelance basis, although some of the larger manufacturers did employ their own teams of designers. A few were local artists, such as Obediah Short and John Kinnell. In 1842 Schools of Design were opened in various cities including Norwich, in an attempt to improve the standard of design.
Designs for shawl borders, Richard Shaw

Most of the dyers had their workshops near the River Wensum, as access to a good water supply was essential. The dyers and the printers would be employed by the manufacturers. The printers worked very closely with the pattern or block cutters.

The fringers probably worked in the manufacturer's house where the shawl would be finished, although there was one firm which specialised in fringe‑making.

For further details see list of shawl trade details in the glossary

The Norwich Shawl Survey

The Costume and Textiles Study Centre maintains an on-going register of Norwich shawls in private hands. The knowledge of the styles, manufacturers and methods is greatly enhanced by the generosity with which shawl owners contributed information on their own precious textiles. If you have a shawl that you would like to have identified or included, please contact the Costume and Textiles Study Centre, Carrow House, 301 King Street, Norwich NR1 2TS, Tel: 01603 223870.