ONCE upon a time an old lady called Auntie Marion gave me and my big brother a lesson in how Harris Tweed got made. It must have been the early 1970s because in a photograph taken on our our trusty Kodak Instamatic during one of several family holidays to Plocropool on Harris, I am wearing on-trend hot pants made by my mum while my big brother is in oversized Aran jumper and shorts. Killer midgies also feature.
Auntie Marion wasn't our real auntie, but everyone called her that. She usually sat in her old tin shed at a massive loom moving shuttles and tapping away at huge pedals with both feet. The noise was deafening. A distinctive stooped figure with white hair, she always wore an apron over a woollen cardigan, black stockings and flat brogues.
Auntie Marion was a born communicator. She showed us how the wool came from the sheep in the field; how it was carded, then woven and how the colours were mixed. I remember watching as she scraped vivid lemony-coloured lichen from a rock and told us it was used to make the yellow in the tweed. Her speaking voice lilted back and forth between Gaelic and English.
Marion Campbell was awarded a British Empire Medal by the Queen in 1985 to mark her lifelong service to the Harris Tweed industry. Typically, she said she wouldn't be going to Buckingham Palace because the honour was not for her, it was for the whole of Harris. The medal was duly presented to her in Harris.
Auntie Marion died in 1996, so unfortunately Manchester-born photographer, Ian Lawson, didn't meet get to meet her as he started to document the people and the places which make Harris Tweed such a distinctive product.
As Lawson has discovered over the last ten years of visiting Harris and Lewis, making Harris Tweed takes time. It's not an art form that can to be rushed. Along the way, he also made lasting friendships which saw him fall under the spell of a way of life which hasn't changed for generations.
In the last ten years, Lawson has collaborated with the Harris Tweed Authority to tell the story of the region's USP.
Lawson's latest exhibition, From the Land, is an updated version of a 2011 exhibition also staged at An Lanntair in Stornoway, called From the Land Comes the Cloth.
A tactile experience, featuring large-scale photographs of people, places and beasts associated with the making of Harris Tweed, his vivid imagery is set alongside sheep fleeces in buckets, a cabinet full of dyed yarn, bobbins, shuttles, Harris Tweed accessories such as bags and purses, and cloth woven into actual jackets (made by Lawson's partner, Alison O'Neill). There is even a fully-operational Hattersley Loom at the heart of it all.
A highlight for visitors is a wall of 55 small rectangular photographic works. On one side of each work is a landscape. On the other is a section of cloth which reflects the landscape's variant hues.
From the Land is the centrepiece of An Lanntair's Harris Tweed Festival Day, which takes place on Saturday August 13 with a day-long homage to Harris Tweed. This one-off celebration is a part of the arts centre's Bealach programme, supported by Creative Scotland's Creative Place Awards, EventScotland and the Harris Tweed Authority.
The day begins with a Tweed Bike Ride around Stornaway to An Lanntair in which 50 all-comers are being encouraged to ditch the lycra and don Harris Tweed for a special cycle with a scheduled stop-off tying in with the Harris Tweed theme. The winner will be presented at An Lanntair with a "geansaidh buidhe", a hand-knitted yellow jersey.
The Ian Lawson exhibition provides a fitting backdrop for a day of talks by the likes of Janet Hunter, author of The Islanders and the Orb, Margaret Ann Macleod, Brand Development Director with Harris Tweed Hebrides, designer Sandra Murray, as well as historian and archaeologist Mary Macleod-Rivett. Archive film will be shown alongside live performances of waulking songs, the traditional folk songs sung by island women as they beat the newly-woven tweed on a flat surface to soften it.
This summer and autumn, various artists will be working on various projects based around the wider Bealach programme, which aims to open up Lewis and Harris up to the rest of the world.
D'ainm nad fhuil (tr: your name in your blood) by Lewis-based artist Calum Angus Mackay is exploring examples of grafitti-like text which appears around Lewis and Harris most week-ends of the year at various roadside locations. The tradition dates back to the days of the black-house, where clean white sheets were preserved in celebration of births & marriages.
In another project, Mapping the Arteries, Roos Dijkhuizen and Janie Nicoll are travelling on bus routes around the island to produce artwork inspired by their experience. The resulting temporary art works will be displayed in some of island's distinctive concrete bus shelters.
What Auntie Marion would make of all this activity – much of it hinged around her beloved tweed – is anyone's guess. I suspect she'd have thrown back her head and laughed a throaty chuckle before padding back to her loom shed.
From the Land: Ian Lawson, An Lanntair, Stornoway, Isle of Lewis until August 13 www.lanntair.com
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here