Moxon

General information

History

Moxon traces its origins to 1556; a period of monarchical uncertainty in England. The firm essentially came to prominence during the reign of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth I of England who reigned from 1558 until 1603, primarily as a Cottage industry. At the time, there were three main stages to the manufacturing of cloth: carding, spinning and weaving.

Established in 1556, the earliest Moxon nurtured their growing relationship with that most natural and healthy of materials; wool, which heralded an era of significant development in handloomed cloth. Over the coming generations, the Moxon family would transform homespun yarn into cloth more than a century before the start of the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain.

By the late seventeenth century, the already well-established textile industry in Yorkshire benefited from the ever-growing wealth in Europe. During the late eighteenth century, at the height of the great Industrial Revolution, the British textile industry saw unparalleled expansion in both techniques and markets, which brought about increasing pressure to modernise and expand, and saw the nationwide introduction of shuttle looms.

In 1887, now based in Old Providence Mills in Marsh, Yorkshire, the company had Benjamin H. Moxon at the helm, who could look back with considerable pride upon his ancestor's contribution to cloth-making in the region. He and his successors maintained a steadfast commitment to the development and expansion of specialist and fancy worsted weaving in Huddersfield, relocating in 1889 to Springfield Mills in Kirkburton, Huddersfield. In 1890, Benjamin H. Moxon’s two sons were taken into partnership and the company became known as B. H. Moxon & Sons.

Continuing success saw B. H. Moxon & Sons, as it was then known, relocate midway through the twentieth century to Southfield Mills in Kirkburton, Huddersfield. Towards the end of the century, Moxon's production was cut down considerably. Subsequently, there was an emphasis on Moxon's antiquated and traditional production process which, with the rest of the world's industry entering rapid modernisation, was effectively a movement in the opposite direction. This included the purchase of the finest wool bales and a revival of Moxon's traditional involvement with Altai Cashmere. The use of Noble rare fibres such as Mink, Ermine, Beaver and Vicuña was maintained together with the use of natural Silk and Pearl Sliver cottons, specialist weaving in keeping with the firm's illustrious history.

Handcrafted Tradition

Moxon’s priority has been to uphold and maintain the proven traditional methods in the creation of handmade cloth, which in the age of mass production, are of a bygone era. Its use of traditional wooden machines complements wool’s natural, healthy characteristics. As a direct result of Moxon's antiquated process, the firm has become renowned for the superior drape of its cloth, which is widely thought to lend itself to superior tailoring. The firm has placed an emphasis on the use of British textile equipment, refusing to purchase from overseas, preferring instead to pay more for British machinery. During the years immediately after the Second World War, blueprints of ancient textile finishing machinery, dating from the nineteenth century, were rescued from the archives of an historic British engineering firm. This machinery was rebuilt, reviving near extinct finishing processes which are exclusive to the firm. Moxon is currently the only remaining woollen and worsted textile manufacturer in England with its very own on-site finishing plant, operating out of an historically significant English mill, ensuring the quality of its cloth and the antiquated nature of its manufacturing process up to the last. Behind the firm's mill, Moxon has two private water lakes which, with Yorkshire's year-round rainfall, ensure an uninterrupted supply of soft untreated water, historically an essential component in the dyeing and finishing processes of cloth, and one of Moxon's key ingredients today. The freshwater, which has cascaded down the Pennines and into Moxon's lakes, contains natural cloth softening characteristics, largely due to having low concentrations of dissolved salts, a composition unmatched anywhere else in England. Naturally, the level of water in Moxon's lakes is purely dependent on the quantity of precipitation.

Today

Early in the twenty-first century, Moxon relocated to the historic Yew Tree Mills in Holmbridge, in the heart of Yorkshire's rural picturesque landscape, surrounded by extensive Pennine Moorland. Set in the entrance to a 75 acre steeply wooded valley, the mill is surrounded by cottages dating back several hundred years, originally occupied by handloom weavers. Although the current mill was built in 1868, there are certain parts which date back to the sixteenth century. Sections of the ancient Roman route that linked Yorkshire to Lancashire are still visible below the mill and the cottages to this day.
As a result of the firm's legendary methods, the cloth manufactured by Moxon is widely regarded as the rarest and most exclusive, which is reflected in its extraordinary prices. The cloth's lack of availability has marked it as somewhat of a unicorn. The firm has also been known to refuse to sell to certain customers as way of maintaining its exclusivity and association with only the very best. An explanation of the cloth's extraordinary price has been attributed to the firm's naturally enforced low production, which must wait a total of three seasons to gather enough fine bales to manufacture a piece. In addition, Moxon's outdated manufacturing takes considerably longer to oversee; a period of fourteen days compared with a modern mill's output of roughly seven hours. The process is thoroughly more cumbersome than conventional methods, with the near constant care the cloth must receive during its creation.

The Moxon Archive

Moxon is widely considered to have the world's most comprehensive archive of woven woollen and worsted samples, spanning the centuries of the firm's distinguished existence. The Archive is divided into two sections; firstly the Moxon Library, which houses archived swatches of cloth. The second, the Moxon Vault, contains suit lengths of historical bearing, cut from pieces manufactured exclusively for Moxon's illustrious clientele. In addition, within the Archive is the private collection of Firas Chamsi-Pasha, which has been amassed over the last thirty years containing woven swatches, colour cards, suit lengths and antique garments from various parts of the world. Being the oldest textile manufacturer currently in existence, Moxon has over the course of its illustrious history created many designs which are now considered classics.