Linen weaver
The only documented attempt ever to grow flax on this particular island in the Outer Hebrides was not a very successful one. The flax blossomed and shone for a month, but was soon battered down by hail and wind. This, for some, would be something of an omen; a warning against trying to do anything too clever with linen in this part of the world. But not the weaver. Her flax might have shimmered purple only for a few weeks, but she has nevertheless been weaving linen for going on a decade. Not just any old linen, either. The weaver makes an unusual type of linen — one which is both familiar and unfamiliar, and which like a lot of good things can only be truly understood and treasured once you have the tale behind it.
The cloth woven here, though, is different; has more in common with the standard local produce of tweed, rather than other linens. When all around you is coarse and hardy and textured, after all, it may be tricky to put your mind to something else.
The weaver also specialises in linen-wool. “Linsey-woolsey”, as they call it, came about — one version of textile history has it — with settlers heading over barren landscapes way back when, unsure of the temperature and climate of tomorrow. And so they hedged their bets: taking with them both flax seeds and sheep. Sheep perish, weave linen; seeds don’t like soil, then wool all round. Of course, if fortune favours both, then you end up with the best of both. The linen-wool is thick, textured, and coarse — but also springy and breathable, so good in all weathers.
The weaving shed is in a corner of the island where you can go no further. The road ends. Perhaps there is something in this circumstance which imbues the weaver with bold and pioneering adventure — of new patterns and finishing techniques, of pushing a machine already at its limits to weave cloth very different from the one for which it was intended. Over the decades, the Hattersley has been modified, tweaked, has had parts dropping off but never replaced because there are more pressing things to do today. It is not a complicated machine, the Hattersley, but it is one which, sometimes, in some, encourages experimentation; its mechanical simplicity a field within which some imaginations blossom and find self-perpetuating and unending permutation.
For every meter of linen woven on the two major and hundred-plus minor islands of the Outer Hebrides, there are thousands if not tens-of-thousands woven of tweed. Linen will never be recognised with its own orb. No authority will ever be established up here for the upkeep and preservation of the honour of the flax. But no matter. Here is a type of cloth original and one of a kind, and yet also inherently and inevitably in-keeping with what the weaving of cloth has been and always will be about in this corner of the British Isles.