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
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TravelTranscript
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.