Harris Tweed and the Truth About Tartan
Harris Tweed and the Truth About Tartan
One cloth defended by an Act of Parliament, and one pattern built on a myth.
A Cloth With Its Own Law
There is no other fabric like this. Harris Tweed is protected by an Act of the UK Parliament, passed in 1993, which sets out in law what the cloth must be: woven by hand by islanders in their own homes in the Outer Hebrides, finished in those islands, and made from pure virgin wool that was dyed and spun there.
Not woven in a mill on the mainland. Not woven by machine. Woven at home, on a foot powered loom, by a person who lives there.
The protection is older than the Act. The Harris Tweed Association formed in 1909 and registered the Orb trade mark, an orb topped with a Maltese cross, and began stamping cloth with it in 1911. In 1993 the Association became the Harris Tweed Authority, a statutory body. To this day an inspector checks every fifty meters of cloth and stamps the Orb on it by hand.
How the World Found Out
Tweed had been woven in those islands for centuries and stayed there. The word tweed itself probably comes from tweel, the Scots word for twill, and the name is often said to have escaped through a misread letter from a mainland mill.
The turn came in 1846. Lady Dunmore, widow of the Earl of Dunmore, had her clan tartan reproduced in tweed by weavers on Harris. It came out beautifully. She began putting it in front of wealthy friends, and within a generation the cloth of a remote island was on the backs of the British sporting classes. One woman with taste and a good address changed the economy of an archipelago.
At its height around half the population of Lewis had a hand in tweed. Today three mills remain, all on Lewis, and roughly one hundred and fifty to one hundred and seventy weavers work from home.
Why It Feels the Way It Does
Most Harris Tweed runs between four hundred and seventy and five hundred grams per running meter, with heavier shooting cloth going up near seven hundred. That is real weight.
The Act's insistence on minimal chemical processing leaves far more lanolin in the wool than modern finishing would. Lanolin is the sheep's own grease. It is the reason a Harris Tweed coat shrugs off weather without any treatment being sprayed on it, and it is the reason the cloth smells like something that was alive.
Now, Tartan
Here is where I have to disappoint some people, gently.
The rule that each clan owns one pattern is mostly a late invention. Before 1746 tartan was regional, not tribal. A weaver in one glen produced a pattern with the dyes available in that glen: lichens off the rocks, heather, roots, bark, and imported indigo when a trader came through. Everybody nearby wore it, whatever their surname. You could guess a man's district from his plaid, not his family.
Then came Culloden. The Dress Act of 1746 banned Highland dress across Scotland. Six months in prison for a first offense, transportation for seven years for a second. Highland regiments in the British army were exempt, which produced the strange result that tartan survived best among men fighting for the crown that had banned it.
The Act ran for thirty six years and was repealed in 1782. By then the everyday habit was broken and much of the local dye knowledge was gone. What returned was not the old thing. Mills began naming patterns after towns and then after families. The royal visit of 1822 and later Balmoral turned it into national costume, and the Victorians catalogued clan tartans into the tidy system we all now assume is ancient.
One more useful fact. When you see a tartan sold as ancient or modern, that is not about age. Ancient means muted tones that imitate old vegetable dyes. Modern means the brighter chemical dyes developed in the Victorian era. Since 2008 there has been an official Scottish Register of Tartans, created by the Scottish Parliament, and anyone can design and register a new one.
Which is exactly what interests me. Tartan was never a rule. It was a color decision made by a person with local materials.
What We Do With It
Every year three new Harris Tweeds are woven by hand for Black Bear Brand in Scotland, and three jackets are built from them. That is the whole run. Colors chosen for us, and never repeated.
The HIGHLANDER came out of an evergreen plaid. There has been a psychedelic blue with pink, red, purple and yellow running through it, a golden, a sky blue, a stonewall gray. Wool from the Hebrides, sherpa or Japanese diamond quilting inside, horn buttons, sewn in Seattle. Rugged and refined, colliding on purpose.
A Way Of Life.
Shop the Story
Black Bear Brand Harris Tweed HIGHLANDER Coat
Black Bear Brand ULTIMATE WOOL Chore Coat in GOLDEN Harris Tweed
Black Bear Brand SKY BLUE Harris Tweed Tartan ZIP Coat
Harris Tweed Psychedelic BLUE Tartan Wool Western Jacket
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