Richard Humphries was enjoying life between the design studio, the London offices of smart interior decorators and visits to Royal locations, brimming with excitement and with a promising career ahead of him when Warner & Sons announced their closure in 1971.  

“I received fifty pounds redundancy, and my first thought was to travel to India with my guitar, but my uncle encouraged me to take the chance and set up my own weaving company at the young age of 20. Slowly I made offers to purchase designs, Jacquard cards, books and equipment. £1 for a loom if I took it apart and moved it myself and I was rescuing things from the skip.”  

Richard was further supported in setting up by his mother and father, who provided both encouragement and much needed storage space. Peter Walters, of nearby Sudbury weaving firm Stephen Walters & Sons (founded 1720) offered him space in the basement of Ashburton Lodge, Sudbury Silk Mills, to set up dobby looms and The Humphries Weaving Company was born. 

Securing workspace led to support grants from the Crafts council and the Worshipful Company of Weavers. Robert ‘Bob’ Mears, a redundant Warner & Sons weaver volunteered to join, without pay initially, happy to ‘square up’ when orders were converted and they began weaving. The orders did come and the early orderbook contains fabrics for Jon Bannonberg, Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler, Chester Jones and Radar cloth for the MOD. An early innovation was to weave window blinds encapsulating mirror squares in the structure. The decorative finish was specified for the newly built Penta Hotel in London in 1973 which boasted 902 bedrooms and cost £100million to build.