Hanse merchants maintain a large network of trading partners to organise their trade. The merchant Hildebrand Veckinchusen, active in Lübeck (his place of residence, where he was also a citizen) and Bruges (where he traded a lot), wrote numerous letters to partners between Cologne and Riga. Today, we can still read many of his letters because they were kept in the Tallinn city archives.

Fabric was an important commodity for Hildebrand Veckinchusen as well as for many other merchants. But how do merchants decide which fabrics to have sent from far away to sell? They discuss that as well in their letters. Veckinchusen also sends pieces of cloth to his Cologne partner Reinhard Noiltgin. It was not unusual for merchants to send each other such samples of goods in order to exchange information about qualities and sales opportunities. Such samples were only useful because the textile products were standardised and had a consistent, reliable quality. The trading partners then knew whether such products were in demand at their end of the trade route. However, actual fabric samples attesting to this practice have hardly survived – the discovery of fabric samples in Hildebrand Veckinchusen’s correspondence from the Tallinn archives is a lucky find here.