Workshop of a Handloom Weaver, Lanark ca. 1900

Workshop of a Handloom Weaver, Lanark ca. 1900

Textiles

The small royal burgh of Lanark, with a population of c.5,000 in the mid-nineteenth century, was long associated with the handloom weaving industry, that most iconic of the skilled craft trades whose demise in the face of mechanisation and the rise of factory production is often used as a metaphor for the death of the craft economy. At its height, the skilled handloom weaver, processing mainly fine wool or wool and linen mixes, was well-paid, proud of his skill and creativity and independent minded. In Scotland as a whole they were the largest single craft group of the first half of the nineteenth century, with high concentrations in west-central Scotland in Glasgow and Paisley and in smaller towns like Lanark. They were celebrated for their rich cultural life, which extended into poetry and song, natural history and gardening. They were also famed for a sense of community and capacity to engage in collective organization to protect their rights and market position. The connection between handloom weaving and the Paisley shawl was famous, but most nineteenth-century weavers made other textiles including wool tartan in Perthshire and linens for home wares in Fife.

This photograph shows one of the last handloom weavers still practising his trade in Lanark. Taken in 1900, it was reported that only five weavers remained in the town. Just twenty years before there were 140 weavers in Lanark. The last to survive, Mr Thomas Chalmers, died in 1938 aged 84. The passing of the age of the handloom weaver generated much commentary in the early twentieth century with frequent images such as this to represent the idea of simpler times when work and home occupied the same space. The photograph, showing an elderly man at his weaving frame in a cottage or small workshop, is artfully posed. To the left is a hearth and cooking range and in the right foreground is a spinning wheel to suggest the relationship between women’s work and men’s work in a domestic or family setting. The latter has been placed for its narrative effect as it is unlikely that the weaver here processed wool generated within his household. Another version of this photograph showing a second elderly man sat smoking by the fireside on the far left of the image, was published as a commercial postcard for tourists.

Those few handloom weavers who did survive the coming of the factories made highly specialised textiles for the elite fashion industry, much as they do today. In the highlands and islands of Scotland they focused on fine tweeds, with marketing support from bodies like the Highland Home Industries Association. In the village of Stonehouse near Lanark, there were a few specialised silk scarf and handkerchief weavers working on jacquard looms into the 1930s. In numerous villages and small towns in Scotland there are streets of terraced weaver cottages to remind us of the once flourishing state of the craft and its communities.

The Royal Burgh of Lanark Museum Trust

The Royal Burgh of Lanark Museum