A wool-stapler is a dealer in wool. The wool-stapler buys wool from the producer, sorts and grades it, and sells it on to manufacturers.
Some wool-staplers acquired significant wealth, such as Richard Chandler of Gloucester (England) who built Winston Hall in 1750. [1]
"Staple" in this particular context means a market.
Before the 17th century a staple was also a particular type of market, "a place appointed by royal authority, in which a body of merchants had exclusive right of purchase of certain goods destined for export".
The now best known English staple was at Calais but in medieval times there were, at various times, many others throughout the kingdoms of England and Ireland and the facing coast of the Low Countries all involved, though not exclusively, with the English wool trade.
The term "wool-stapler" fell out of use during the 20th century.
Wool is the textile fibre obtained from sheep and other animals, including cashmere and mohair from goats, qiviut from muskoxen, hide and fur clothing from bison, angora from rabbits, and other types of wool from camelids.
Crewel embroidery, or crewelwork, is a type of surface embroidery using wool. A wide variety of different embroidery stitches are used to follow a design outline applied to the fabric. The technique is at least a thousand years old.
A staple is a type of two-pronged fastener, usually metal, used for joining or binding materials together. Large staples might be used with a hammer or staple gun for masonry, roofing, corrugated boxes and other heavy-duty uses. Smaller staples are used with a stapler to attach pieces of paper together; such staples are a more permanent and durable fastener for paper documents than the paper clip.
A stapler is a mechanical device that joins pages of paper or similar material by driving a thin metal staple through the sheets and folding the ends. Staplers are widely used in government, business, offices, work places, homes and schools.
The Merino is a breed or group of breeds of domestic sheep, characterised by very fine soft wool. It was established in Spain in the Middle Ages, and was for several centuries kept as a strict monopoly – exports were not allowed, and those who tried risked the death penalty. During the eighteenth century, flocks were sent to the courts of a number of European countries, including France, Hungary, the Netherlands, Prussia, Saxony and Sweden. The Merino subsequently spread to many parts of the world, including Australia and New Zealand. Numerous recognised breeds, strains and variants have developed from the original type; these include, among others, the American Merino and Delaine Merino in the Americas, the Australian Merino, Booroola Merino and Peppin Merino in Oceania, the Gentile di Puglia, Merinolandschaf and Rambouillet in Europe.
A wool staple is a cluster or lock of wool fibres and not a single fibre.
Owling was a common term for the smuggling of sheep or wool from England to another country, particularly France. The practice was illegal in England from 1367 until 1824. Participants were called "owlers"; their ships "owling boats".
Broadcloth is a dense, plain woven cloth, historically made of wool. The defining characteristic of broadcloth is not its finished width but the fact that it was woven much wider and then heavily milled in order to shrink it to the required width. The effect of the milling process is to draw the yarns much closer together than could be achieved in the loom and allow the individual fibres of the wool to bind together in a felting process, which results in a dense, blind face cloth with a stiff drape which is highly weather-resistant, hard wearing and capable of taking a cut edge without the need for being hemmed.
The Company of Merchant Adventurers of London was a trading company founded in the City of London in the early 15th century. It brought together leading merchants in a regulated company in the nature of a guild. Its members' main business was exporting cloth, especially white (undyed) broadcloth, in exchange for a large range of foreign goods.
The Company of Merchants of the Staple of England, the Merchants of the Staple, also known as the Merchant Staplers, is an English company incorporated by Royal Charter in 1319 dealing in wool, skins, lead and tin which controlled the export of wool to the continent during the late medieval period. The company of the staple may perhaps trace its ancestry back as far as 1282 or even further.
In European historiography, the term "staple" refers to the entire medieval system of trade and its taxation; its French equivalent is étape, and its German equivalent stapeln, words deriving from Late Latin stapula with the same meaning, derived from stabulum. designating a system that Hadrianus Junius considered to be of Gaulish origin.
The Ordinance of the Staple was an Ordinance issue in the Great Council in October 1353. It aimed to regularise the status of staple ports in England, Wales, and Ireland. In particular, it designated particular ports where specific goods could be exported or imported. These were called the 'staple ports'. It also established dedicated courts, known as the courts of staple, where disputes relating to commercial matters could be heard, in preference to the courts of common law.
Staple is a village and civil parish in east Kent, England. The village lies southwest of the nearby village of Ash and the town of Sandwich, and east of Canterbury.
Surgical staples are specialized staples used in surgery in place of sutures to close skin wounds or connect or remove parts of the bowels or lungs. The use of staples over sutures reduces the local inflammatory response, width of the wound, and time it takes to close.
Staple refers to textile fibers of discrete length. The opposite is a filament fiber, which comes in continuous lengths. Staple length is a characteristic fiber length of a sample of staple fibers. It is an essential criterion in yarn spinning aids in cohesion and twisting. Compared to synthetic fibers, natural fibers tend to have different and shorter lengths. The quality of natural fibers like cotton is categorized on staple length such as short, medium, long-staple and, extra long. Gossypium barbadense, one of several cotton species, produces extra-long staple fibers. The staple fibers may be obtained from natural and synthetic sources. In the case of synthetics and blends, the filament yarns are cut to a predetermined length. PSF is an abbreviation of Polyester staple fibers.
Morris Abrams (1908–1981) was the founder of Arrow Fastener Co., Inc., a manufacturer of fastening tools that since 1999 has been a subsidiary of Masco Corporation.
The Galway is a breed of domestic sheep originating in Galway, in the west of Ireland. They are a large polled white-faced sheep, having a characteristic bob of wool on the head and wool on the legs. The outer lips are of a dark colour and dark spots on the ears are common. The average litter size is 1.45 in pedigree flocks. While a major proportion of ewes within the bred weigh 80–85 kg and have a litter size of 1.3, there is wide variation to be found.
The Shrewsbury Drapers Company was a trade organisation founded in 1462 in the town of Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England. The members were wholesale dealers in wool or woollen cloth. The Company dominated the trade in Welsh cloth for many years, holding a virtual monopoly from the 16th century to the late 18th century. It lost its position when the roads were improved, making it practical for factors from Liverpool and elsewhere to travel into Wales and purchase cloth directly from the makers, and became irrelevant when the Industrial Revolution made trade guilds obsolete. Today it survives as a charity that runs almshouses in Shrewsbury.
Winston Hall is a grade II* listed building in Constitution Walk, off Bell Lane, in the city of Gloucester, England.
Richard Chandler was a wealthy wool-stapler of Gloucester.