‘… Tis not the quantity but the quality and newness I ask. As to the old pattern, I have had enough.’

Manufacturers had to be mindful of the changing tastes and fashions of foreign customers. They did this by travelling abroad themselves, sending their sons as apprentices on the continent, and especially by using agents whose job was to negotiate with overseas wholesalers and gain new orders. Special pattern books, such as the John Kelly pattern book of 1763 (V&A) and the George Tuthill, 1769 were produced to show off the selection of cloths and designs.

The period 1740 – 60 is seen as the zenith of Norwich success. By the 1790s the export trade had been affected by the American War of Independence and from 1793 by the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. These severely reduced trade with the American subcontinent and then mainland Europe.

In 1793 Catherine the Great placed an embargo on Norwich goods, a huge blow. The East India’s monopoly was lost in 1813. Although camlets were still sold in China, other places towns such as Halifax could supply them more cheaply than Norwich. A brief recovery from 1815 onwards allowed the new Norwich Crape, a soft silk and worsted fabric produced in the grey and dyed in numerous colours to become fashionable. Great efforts were made to promote the fabrics: in Norwich Assembly Rooms, a Crape Ball was held where the wives and daughters of the great and good were encouraged to wear Norwich fabrics of geranium-coloured crape, to support local distressed weavers. Experimentation produced a succession of briefly successful, high fashion cloths: crepes de Lyon, poplin francaise, silk and worsted brilliant and loveliest of all very soft, light unglazed silk and worsted challis.