Weaving Home

Ask a Scot what a tweed is and he’ll answer vaguely, “Well, it’s hairy, like.” That is to say, if you ran into one on a dark night you’d know it (if you were a Scot). But if you think of the original purpose of a Scottish tweed--to protect the hunter or fisherman from the wet, windy weather of northern Britain and to keep him hidden from his prey--you will reach a deeper understanding of the fabric itself.

A Scottish tweed possesses three important features. Its hairiness springs from the yarn, made up of short fibers carded to blend them.

Its subtle colors mirror the hues of the land itself, a result of dyeing the wool fibers in batches of different colors and mingling them together before they are spun into yarn. A desire for camouflage while hunting in the hills has dictated the traditional tweed colors--the browns, greens and grays reflect the bracken, grasses, mosses, heather and gray outcroppings of rock typical of the Highlands landscape.

And third, tweed’s twill-weave construction is packed more tightly and densely than simple plain-weave fabric, providing better protection against weather.

Scotland is still famous for the quality of its woolens, and particular types of cloth maintain their near-legendary association with certain locales. The Scots have woven and worn hairy, multicolored wool clothing for hundreds of years. But it was only in the early decades of the 19th century, when the gentry in both England and Scotland took up the coarse, sturdy cloth, that it came to be called tweed.

The word tweed derives from the Scottish pronunciation of “twill” as “tweel.” Tweels woven in the Borders region of southeastern Scotland were in great demand in London by the 1840s. Through a clerk’s copying error, so the story goes, “tweel” was rewritten as “tweed,” mistakenly identifying the heavy cloth with the area around the River Tweed, which flows through the Borders where most of what remains of Scotland’s woolen industry is still active. But two of the finest tweeds, with long and solid traditions, are still made in the remote Highlands region.

Harris tweed from Harris (the southern portion of the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides islands west of Scotland) and the stalking tweeds worn traditionally for hunting and fishing and made by Hunters of Brora on Scotland’s northeast coast are among those tied to clearly defined places.

Harris tweed was once a cottage industry--manufactured by hand in the homes of local people for their own use and to make a little extra money. Even the tweeds of Brora grew from the tradition of the checked cloaks worn by shepherds on the hill.

Campbell’s of Beauly--a 30-minute drive west of Inverness--is the Scottish tweed shop par excellence. Shelves are piled to the ceiling with tweeds the colors of the hills. They are famous throughout Britain and well enough known elsewhere to bring in the hunting set from Germany, the Netherlands and Italy. I heard about it first from a canon of Winchester cathedral who spent his holidays among the strange peaks nearby; then from the laird of a 120,000-acre estate in the Highlands who buys tweeds for himself and his gamekeepers there; then from Eric Allen, proprietor of the Airds Hotel in Argyll, who has his kilts tailored there.

Tweed Mercers by Appointment to H.M. Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, Campbell’s has been in the tweed business for more than 130 years and in the present shop since about 1866. The royal warrant, given to chosen merchants by various living members of the Royal Family, is a mark of the highest quality and reliability. Campbell’s also held the Warrant for the late Duke of Windsor. Nevertheless, Miriam Campbell, with her lovat eyes and the finest, whitest hands I have ever seen, welcomed me by name when I appeared at the shop after an interval of four years, and again in the summer of 1995--six years later. That’s the kind of people the Campbells are.

Miriam Campbell, who runs the business with her brother James and sister Catriona, couldn’t say exactly how many different tweeds they carry, but there were 22 in stock made exclusively for Campbell’s. Because the majority of their customers are “the hunting and sporting lot,” as she described them, the emphasis is on tweeds in the lovats, browns and grays of the hills, but there are amethysts and pinks, blues and a few reds, as well.

Campbell’s carries Cheviot stalking tweeds from several mills, including a selection of what Hunters calls its Carrol range (about $70 per yard). Among their most subtle and richly colored tweeds, lighter weight than Carrol (19 ounces as opposed to 22/23 ounces per yard) and considerably less expensive, are three woven exclusively for Campbell’s ($55 per yard). My favorite was a greeny-brown lovat with a clear blue over-check. Any of Hunters’ standard Carrol patterns can be ordered through the store for $100 per yard. And they keep dozens of samples from other mills, as well as ready-made tweed jackets ($260 to $300 for ladies, $230 to $380 for men) and skirts ($90 to $250); lambs wool ($90 to $125) and cashmere sweaters (from $215 to $500), as well as hand-knit golf stockings and other wool hose, scarves and blankets. Harris tweeds are priced from $25 to $40 a yard.

The quintessential Scottish tweed is Harris. Originally the women of the island from which it comes knitted and wove woolens to protect their families against wind, rain and cold. In 1840, Lady Catherine Dunmore, whose husband the earl had bought Harris from the MacLeods (hereditary lairds of the island of Lewis since the 1200s), saw that organized production and sale of the tweeds would alleviate the poverty of her tenants. She organized the first London sales, popularizing the name Harris tweed. Harriet, Duchess of Sutherland, was attracted by the thick stockings hand-knitted of Harris yarn and in 1859 established an agency in Edinburgh for the sale of tweeds and knitted goods. All of this activity created a market for the woolens.

Harris tweed wears like iron, bears up well in damp weather and is very warm. Most often patterned in checks or herringbone, a Harris tweed may contain fibers of four or five colors, blended to create richness and depth. The characteristic rough, hairy surface comes from the coarse, long fibers of wool from the Scottish Blackface sheep, a hardy breed suited to the harsh climate of the islands. Today, only the independent weavers of Harris, who keep their own flocks and send their own wool clip to the mills for washing, carding and dyeing, use the wool of the Blackface in their tweeds.

Other weavers and the large mills in Lewis obtain all their wool from the British Wool Marketing Board on the mainland, which includes a high proportion of the shorter-fibered wool of the Cheviot breed (introduced into the Highlands by the wicked English). In addition to eliminating nearly all Blackface wool (which is what gives Harris tweed its hairiness) from their tweeds, the mills subject the cloth to a finishing process that flattens the surface.

Harris tweed is legally defined by the Board of Trade as tweed “made from pure, Scottish, virgin wool, spun, dyed and finished in the Outer Hebrides, and hand-woven by the islanders at their own homes,” thus giving the impression that it is still a cottage industry. In fact, most of the tweed is entirely mill-made, except for the weaving process itself, which is contracted out to crofters--men and women who farm tiny plots of land and who own their own looms and labor at home as piece-work laborers.

The weavers who produce the most beautiful Harris tweeds, maintaining their independence from the big tweed mills in Lewis to the north, are clustered in the hamlets of Drinnishader, Plocrapool and Scadabay. Unfortunately, the Harris Tweed Assn., while claiming to represent all weavers of Harris tweed, only reluctantly recognizes any but mill-sponsored goods. And of late, there has been significant pressure on the weavers of Lewis and Harris to purchase expensive new looms capable of producing fabric that is twice the traditional 30-inch width. This, some in the industry think, may help reverse years of declining sales by making the fabric more attractive to the fashion industry that prefers using the wider fabric.

*

Today, I know of only one weaver who dyes her wool with plant-derived colors, spins her own weft yarns by hand and finishes her own tweeds by the old-fashioned method of washing with hot soapy water and pounding on a washboard to produce a dense yet soft fabric.

Anne Campbell of Liceasto, a hamlet on the east coast of Harris, learned her skills from the late Marion Campbell, who until earlier this year lived up the road a few miles in Plocrapool. She was the last of generations of local women who raised their own flocks of Blackface sheep, collected plants to color them, dyed and spun the wool, wove it on hand-powered looms and finished it themselves. Anne (no relation to Marion) makes seven or eight different tweeds a year dyed a range of browns, blues, yellows and grays, obtained from the crottle lichen that spots the gray stones of Harris, yellow from other plants and blue from indigo. Her work is far more labor intensive, richer in texture and subtler in color than any other Harris tweed woven today, and although it costs more, it is well worth the investment.

It turns out, however, that the Rolls Royce of Scottish tweeds is entirely machine made. In the village of Brora, on the east coast off the North Sea, Hunters of Brora (formerly T.M. Hunter) make Shetland wool and other tweeds. The jewel in Hunters’ crown, however, is a group of tweeds called the Carrol range. (At 22/23 ounces per yard, these are heavy tweeds; about $45 per yard.) Made for decades since Hunters’ founding in 1901 as outdoor clothing for the landed gentry, their gamekeepers and ghillies, the tweeds reflect a much older tradition: that of wool cloth patterned with the district or estate check.

Since the first shepherds came to the Highlands from the Borders during the 18th century, wrapped in their black and white checked shawls, employees on the great estates of the north have worn variants of a few basic checks. Even today, Hunters weaves dozens of district or estate checks, each reserved exclusively for use by the owner of a large estate in northern Scotland, his family and employees. Each is designed to suit the location of the estate, to blend in with the colors of the hills.

These “bullet-proof tweeds,” as Lord Alaistair Strathnaver of nearby Dunrobin Castle affectionately refers to the Carrol fabrics, are made 100% from the tough wool of Cheviot sheep.

High-density yarn and weave, the result of the tremendous force exerted by the mill’s power looms, gives Hunters’ Cheviot wools a compact, hard and nearly impermeable surface.

It is not their technical excellence, however, that catches the eye of the tweed connoisseur, but their richness and depth of color, achieved by mingling many shades into a single strand of yarn. The 30-odd patterns of Carrol in the public domain include a seemingly endless number of variations on classical themes: houndstooth, windowpane and bird’s-eye checks; various herringbones banded with narrow stripes or crossed with windowpanes; and solid twills.

Campbell’s of Beauly carries Harris tweeds made by weavers in southwest Harris, soft women’s wear tweeds from the Borders and wool and Angora mixtures. But Miriam Campbell emphasizes, “the stalking tweeds are the most important part of our business. Some of the big estates have been split up--some of the new owners have resurrected the old estate tweeds, while others design new ones.” These tweeds are specially ordered from mills such as Hunters, then sold to the estate owners through Campbell’s. These include Cheviot stalking tweeds from several mills, including a few patterns made exclusively for them by Hunters of Brora.

The best of Scotland’s tweeds reflect not only the visual splendors of moor and mountain, loch and sea, but in their history, as well, these sturdy but hauntingly beautiful woolen fabrics tell an important story of Scotland’s artistic, political and economic vicissitudes. And the closer you get to the source, the more deeply this is felt.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

GUIDEBOOK

Tweed Terrain

Getting there: British Air flies from LAX to Inverness, Scotland, with a change of planes in London. Advance-purchase, round-trip fares start at about $890.

American, Virgin Atlantic, Delta, United, British Air and Air New Zealand fly nonstop from LAX to London. Advance-purchase, round-trip fares start at about $635. British Air flies London to Inverness. Round-trip fares start at about $175.

It’s about a 30-minute drive from Inverness Airport to Beauly, a 45-minute drive to Brora. To reach Harris, fly from Inverness to Stornoway on British Air. Advance-purchase, round-trip fares start at $95.

Where to buy tweed: Anne Campbell, Clo Mor, 1 Liceasto, Isle of Harris, Scotland UK HS3 3EL (tel. 001-44-1859-530-364).

Campbell & Co., Inverness-shire IV4 7BU; tel. 011-44-1463-782-239, fax 001-44-1463-782-834.

Hunters of Brora Ltd., station Square, Brora, Sutherland UK KW9 6NA; tel. 001-44-1408-621-366, fax 011-44-1408-621-103). Open Monday to Saturday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

For more information: British Tourist Authority, 551 Fifth Ave., Suite 701, New York 10176-0799, (800) 462-2748 or (212) 986-2200; fax (212) 986-1188 or (800) GO2BRITAIN.