Hay's Way: Katharine meets Robin from Andrew Elliot Mill in Selkirk

The Scotsman

Join Katharine Hay as she makes her way around Scotland on foot. Today she has been chatting to Robin Elliot, a member of the Elliot family, traditional weavers in the Scottish Border town of Selkirk

Transcript

00:00I arrived in Selkirk last night quite late and managed to head straight to the

00:28campsite and this morning just walking up from the river I came across the

00:34these old mill factories. The one behind me, the big one, is as derelict and has

00:41been so for about 30 years. Robin Elliott was just telling me and he he runs the

00:49business just next door in this building here with the lights on. I just went in

00:53to have a look and he was telling me about how his dad founded the business

00:59and yeah they've been one of the few remaining traditional tweed and tartan

01:06mills. My dad started the business up in 1965 and he'd been a, you know, he'd been

01:15a tartan, sorry, a tweed designer. He'd been a designer since the 40s, you know,

01:21in various mills and so on and then he used to do freelance work. He was doing

01:25freelance work so he would go into other companies and design their ranges for

01:29them for each season, you know, and, you know, but he then decided to set up his

01:34own company literally as an avenue for his own designs and so yeah he started the

01:41business in 65 and then we basically purchased this building in 1973 and

01:48started up in, you know, here in 1973. Yeah and primarily, you know, weaving

01:56tweeds because that was my dad's background really and we would sell

02:02that on to tailors and clothing manufacturers or, you know, most of what

02:07we and what we still do now is most of the what we weave in terms of the tweeds

02:11we sell that on to like cloth merchants who will then sell that on, you

02:18know, to tailors or various all over the world, you know, so that's the vast

02:22majority that we do and then I say we have always woven tartan but over the

02:29last 15 years we've been doing more and more and it's all mainly bespoke tartans.

02:36It's people coming to us and saying, oh I just need 10 meters of this tartan, can

02:39you weave it for us? So we can do that, you know, because the bigger mills are

02:46more set up for doing larger quantities. So, you know, so people come to us and say

02:53I've designed this tartan, can you weave it for me? Or my tartan is such-and-such, I

02:58can't get it from anyone else, can you weave it for me? You know, or even people

03:03come to us and say can you design a tartan for me? You know, for my family or

03:08for a company or something like that. So we do, you know, so I can design, you know, I've

03:13designed a few over the years, you know, and then obviously we then obviously go

03:18ahead and, you know, weave it for them as well, you know, for whatever they

03:22want it for. So, you know, there's all these various things, we do

03:27commission work for other people as well, people who've, you know, have their own

03:32product but don't have a manufacturing, so they'll come to us and say here's my

03:37designs, can you weave it for me? You know, so we'll produce stuff for them that

03:41and then we also produce our own blankets as well, you know, a lot of

03:46the rugs that we do, what we do is we reuse any leftover yarn that we have

03:51from weaving the tweeds that we have, the colours that we have left over, then I

03:54also then, we incorporate them into into blankets. Where do you get your wool from?

03:59There's two or three suppliers that I have who are based down in Yorkshire, and they

04:08have, you know, they all have a range of colours in certain qualities, you know,

04:13and I base, I mean the tweeds that I have are based upon the colours

04:18that are available from those suppliers, you know, it's almost like, it's

04:23almost like, say, you know, for example, say if you go into B&Q and you're

04:26wanting, you know, or something like, you know, if you're

04:29redecorating your house and you're, you know, you'll get the shade

04:33cards from the paint suppliers and you'll just pick your colours

04:37from that, and this is the exact same thing, I'll have a shade card with the

04:42various colours and, you know, and I, you know, match my colours with that, and

04:47those colours are suppliable, you know, they can then supply to us

04:51from stock, and then I say whatever yarn we have left over from weaving that,

04:58rather than just storing the yarn away, because we always have maybe two or three

05:02keelers left over, then, you know, rather than just storing the yarns away, we

05:06literally just reuse those colours and those will go into the blankets that we

05:12have, you know, so yeah, it's a good way of, it's a good way of, you know, recycling,

05:18obviously, you know, the yarns that we have. I was quite lucky, I just

05:23knocked on the door and he happened to be in making, making some garments and

05:29was very kind to do a tour and explained to me how it all still works, how

05:36the machines work, and yeah, how much of a tradition it's been for the area, but

05:43also how he's still continuing these traditional methods today.

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