Jonathan Quearney

I have just been on holiday in the South East of Germany near Dresden in Saxony. Apart from being a beautiful area with stunning architecture, it also gives its name to a type of merino wool!

In 1765 Ferdinand VI of Spain gave some Escurial merino sheep to Prince Xavier the Elector of Saxony and these were then interbred with the Saxon sheep to produce the Saxony Merino or Electoral Merino. These sheep produced a very fine, dense, soft yarn which made German wool famous as the best in the world.

Many Saxony merinos were exported and they form one of the bloodlines for many of the extrafine merino strains today. Germany is no longer considered a source for the finest Saxony type wool - that is now produced in Australia and, to a certain extent, South Africa. By using Saxony wool, mills can get a lovely soft handle on the cloth which is preferred by some who think that wool is a bit scratchy.

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Hello everybody

Just a quick post to let you know that the shop will be closed on Monday and Tuesday next week (30th and 31st August). Apologies if that affects your plans, but we will be back full of energy from Wednesday!

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As some of you may know Huddersfield Fine Worsteds (owner of a variety of brands including J&J Minnis and J&G Hardy) has recently been purchased by the American firm HMS International Fabrics Inc. This follows Holland & Sherry’s purchase by the Individualized Apparel Group in 2003.

This in itself isn’t too surprising or disturbing, but the long term effects may be. HFW’s premises at Kirkheaton have been levelled and HMS International is only buying the brands. More and more of Holland & Sherry’s cloths are made in Chile rather than in England. What we worry about is the future and reputation of British cloth. In contrast, the “Made in Italy” brand has protected and developed the industry in Italy – is it time to have more publicity for “Made in England” and to publicise how strict the criteria are to label something as such?

HMS International also owns a Chinese mill but we haven’t seen the output yet to compare with our Italian and British cloths. It will be very interesting to see the quality and more interesting to see how customers react. But we hope that this doesn’t mean that HMS International will start to introduce Chinese made cloth into the books of the HFW brands, because it may hasten the decline of the “Made in England” brand.

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