Cecilia Charlton

About Cecilia’s Research:

The founder of the Highland Folk Museum and Highland scholar I. F. Grant describes Folk Ways as the features ‘of life in a well-knit, self-supporting community bound closely to the land’. This SGSAH-AHRC funded research strives to examine the hand-woven textiles of Scotland that derive from these lifestyles, which I am referring to as Folk Weaving. Scotland is internationally identified with its textile traditions; Tartan and Tweed are immediately recognisable national signifiers. However, the success of this national story has overshadowed the domestic histories which pre-existed industrialisation, and which formed part of the cultural heritage of rural Scotland into the early 20th century. Separating the folk tradition from the largely industrial history of Tartan and Tweed is essential towards understanding the skill and artistry of Scotland’s folk weavers which was rooted in a deep relationship to local ecologies (material and social) rather than machinery and global economics. The result of this research will be a comprehensive survey of hand-spun, hand-woven and naturally-dyed weavings achieved through documentation and analysis of objects currently held in collections throughout Scotland.

Further implications of this research relate to contemporary concerns around the impact of capitalist economies in relation to rural lifestyles, colonialist psychologies, ecological sustainability, and loss of cultural heritage.

The academic and archival aspects of this research are underpinned by studio practice, which is centered around the processes of hand-weaving, hand-spinning, and natural dyeing. As propositioned by John Butt in Scottish Textile History (1987), “[An] empiric approach is the key to tartan research, for the question ‘What did the early Highland weavers do?’ can often only be answered by ‘What would I do in their place?’” Through work with primitive fleeces, hand-spinning, hand-weaving and natural dyeing from locally-foraged plants, deeper insight into the folk weaving practices of indigenous Scottish societies will be gained.