Harris Tweed - Production

Production

The original name of the cloth was tweel, Scots for twill, it being woven in a twilled rather than a plain pattern. A traditional story has the name coming about almost by chance. About 1830, a London merchant received a letter from a Hawick firm about some tweels. The London merchant misinterpreted the handwriting, understanding it to be a trade-name taken from the river Tweed that flows through the Scottish Borders textile area. Subsequently the goods were advertised as Tweed, and the name has remained ever since.

During the economic difficulties of the Highland potato famine of 1846-7, Catherine Murray, Countess of Dunmore was instrumental in the promotion and development of Harris Tweed as a sustainable and local industry. Recognising its sales potential, she had the Murray family tartan copied in tweed by the local weavers and suits were made for the Dunmore estate gamekeepers and gillies. Proving a success, Lady Dunmore sought to widen the market by removing the irregularities caused by dyeing, spinning and weaving (all done by hand) in order to bring it in line with machine-made cloth. She achieved this by organising and financing training in Alloa for the Harris weavers and by the late 1840s a London market was established which led to an increase in sales of tweed.

With the industrial revolution the Scottish mainland turned to mechanisation, but the Outer Hebrides retained their traditional processes of manufacturing cloth. Until the middle of the 19th century the cloth was only produced for personal use within the local market. It was not until between 1903 and 1906 that the tweed-making industry in Lewis significantly expanded. Production increased until the peak figure of 7.6 million yards was reached in 1966. However the Harris Tweed industry declined along with textile industries in the rest of Europe. Harris Tweed has survived because of its distinctive quality and the fact that it is protected by an act of Parliament limiting the use of the Sovereign's Orb trademark to tweeds made in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland.

One high profile promotional success of Harris Tweed in recent years has been their use on several Nike running shoe designs including the Terminator, Blazer, and Air Force 1. Around 95 per cent of Harris Tweed production is from the mills of Harris Tweed Hebrides in Shawbost, Isle of Lewis, a company founded in 2007 and who have had success in extending the appeal of this "champagne of fabrics." They export to more than 40 countries and supply designers like Alexander McQueen, Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren and Steven Alan. While Harris Tweed has been mainly a fashion fabric in recent years, Harris Tweed Hebrides has broken new ground by supplying most of the interiors fabrics for Glasgow's first five-star hotel, Blythswood Square, said to be the biggest interiors project since Harris Tweed was used in the fitting out of the ocean liner QE2 in the 1960s. The company has picked up two major honours: Textile Brand of the Year for 2009 at the Scottish Fashion Awards, and premier award for Outstanding Style Achievement at the Scottish Style Awards, reflecting a renaissance of interest in the fabric and its use by cutting-edge designers.

Every length of cloth is stamped with the official Orb symbol, trademarked by the Harris Tweed Association in 1909, when Harris Tweed was defined as "hand-spun, hand-woven and dyed by the crofters and cottars in the Outer Hebrides."

Machine-spinning and vat-dyeing have since replaced hand methods, and only weaving is now done in the home under the governance of the Harris Tweed Authority established by an act of Parliament in 1993. Harris Tweed is now defined as "hand woven by the islanders at their homes in the Outer Hebrides, finished in the islands of Harris, Lewis, North Uist, Benbecula, South Uist and Barra and their several purtenances (The Outer Hebrides) and made from pure virgin wool dyed and spun in the Outer Hebrides."