BURNLEY, UK— Matthew Crew has joined John Spencer in order to spearhead sales and marketing and take the brand ‘Ian Mankin’ global – and at the same time seek out commission weaving opportunities with European editors of high end furnishing fabrics. Crew is a seasoned veteran of the English textiles industry, spending most of his career at Crowson’s. Crew reports to David Collinge, Managing Director of what is the last textile mill still operating in this small town of Burnley in the north of England where the industrialized cotton weaving industry had its roots. The Spencer family started the mill in the 1860s and it is still owned and run by the same family. Collinge is now the 6th generation of the same family in charge of the business. Traditionally, the town was famous for fabrics for printing but John Spencer now specializes in stripes, checks and fancy jacquard designs using dyed yarns, Crew explains. “At its peak in the 1920s there were over 100,000 looms rattling away day and night – more than one for every man, woman and child in the town. The weaving industry had a glorious 100 years but went into terminal decline in the 1960’s,” Crew says. The town of Burnley and John Spencer had a tradition of weaving fine cotton fabrics for calico printing.  Nowadays, the production is much more varied and the textiles created and woven in the mill go into end uses such as interiors and furnishings; industrial fabrics for coating and laminating, fashion, technical composites, and even parachutes for the ejector seats in fighter planes. The yarns for these applications are made from a wide range including wool, silk, acrylic, polyester, viscose, linen and hi-tech items such as Kevlar and Nomex. In 2008 one of John Spencer’s interiors customers retired and asked the mill to take on his business. Ian Mankin was a well-known fashion designer who had designed leather jackets for celebrities like the Beatles, Michael Caine and Ronald Reagan. Mankin also started an interior fabrics business in 1983 with a shop in London and rapidly became famous for his natural fabrics. John Spencer was weaving most of Ian Mankin’s fabrics and David and Ian had worked closely together to develop the business. It was a natural transition for David to take over the running of the business when Ian decided it was time for him to retire.