Johnstons of Elgin
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| Private | |
| Industry | Wholesale Manufacturer and Retailer |
| Founded | 1797 |
| Headquarters | Elgin, Scotland |
| Products | Woven and Knitted Products |
| Website | www.johnstonscashmere.com |
Johnstons of Elgin, also known as Johnstons Cashmere,[1] is a woollen mill in Elgin, Moray, Scotland.
History
Since its establishment in 1797, the company has traded from its present site on the banks of the River Lossie. In all that time has been owned and run by just two families, the Johnstons and the Harrisons. As far back as 1851 the company has pioneered the weaving of Vicuna and Cashmere in Scotland and these fibres remain the foundation of the company’s products today. The original records of Johnstons of Elgin have survived several fires and floods and from them we learn that in the early days Alexander Johnston’s main business was linen and flax with a substantial input from tobacco and oatmeal. The first reference to Wool appears in the records in 1801 and it would seem from the Day Book that the Linen business was phased out during the first part of the 19th century and the woollen side became firmly established by 1810.
Thirty years later in the early 1840s Johnstons of Elgin was involved in the origination of a range of designs, which have become known as the Estate Tweeds. To some extent Estate Tweeds might be said to be the distant cousins of the Clan Tartans. Both tweeds and tartans identify groups of people, but while tartan identifies members of the same family no matter where they live, estate tweeds identify people who live and work in the same area whether they are related or not.
The development of the estate tweeds was largely due to the decline in the influence of the clan chiefs after the Battle of Culloden in 1746. Landowners in the Highlands were seduced by the social life in Edinburgh and London but found that their estates could not support them in the style enjoyed by the southern aristocracy. Also at this time many people sought to follow the example of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert by buying or renting a sporting estate or deer forest. It became fashionable for both owners and retainers to dress in the same pattern of tweed.
A secondary reason for the creation of the estate tweeds was the need to provide a camouflage for the stalkers when they were hunting on the hill. Some of the checks, to look at, might appear to do the opposite but it is surprising how effective many of the brightest tweeds are good at breaking up a man’s outline on the hill. In most cases the colours chosen were those which blended well with background of the mountain and moor in an area.
The late Lord Lovat related how his grandfather had pointed out to his wife that the colours of the sand, heather, bracken, bluebells and birches on the far shore of the Loch Morar blended together to make one beautiful colour effect. From this inspiration Johnstons created the original Lovat mixture.
Originally the estate tweeds were woven in heavyweight cloths which were designed to withstand life on the hill and the Scottish weather. Around the start of the 20th century, these designs were interpreted in the lighter weight fabrics for more general use. At the end of the 1960s, Johnstons ignored precedent and invested in knitwear manufacturing. Originally sited in Elgin, manufacture was transferred to Hawick in the heart of the Scottish borders in the late 1970s. This division has continued to flourish. Johnstons of Elgin has expanded dramatically in the last part of the twentieth century and the company now has one of the most sophisticated weaving and knitting plants in the world. The whole company operates on the principle that only the best is good enough and this policy extends from purchasing the finest raw materials, through design to manufacture. Johnstons is the UK's last remaining vertical woollen mill and the only one still to carry out all processes from raw material to finished garments.
Raw materials
Alpaca, Guanaco, Camelhair, Mohair, Angora, Chinchilla and Mink have all passed through Elgin to be fashioned into variety of luxury fabrics, Johnstons of Elgin introduced Vicuna, the finest, rarest and most exclusive fibre in the world, into Europe and at the great exhibition of London, the company was awarded a medal for its superb Vicuna shawls. Today, Cashmere, the fine undercoat of a breed of mountain goat from China and Mongolia, is the most popular and versatile of the rarer fibres used.
Cashmere
When the under fleece arrives in Elgin it is matted, greasy and full of coarse hairs, The fleece is then dehaired to separate the fine cashmere from the coarse guard hair. In the 19th century this was done by hand but towards the end of the 19th century machines were developed. Johnstons pioneered this and for many years mechanical dehairing was a closely kept an industrial secret. Nowadays dehairing by machine is relatively commonplace and most Cashmere today is bought de-haired, although capacity for dehairing is still maintained at Elgin so that the company retains the right to claim it processes from ‘fibre to garment’ on one site.
Processing fibre to garment
There are in the region of thirty different processes involved in converting raw fibre into finished garments.
Teasing, blending, carding and spinning
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Teasing
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Blending
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Carding
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Spinning
Dyeing can leave the fibres in rather a felted and matted state and so to open them and prepare them for carding they are teased out over a series of spiked rollers. At this stage the fibres are sprayed with a coating of light oil which protects them in the subsequent processes and makes them easier to manage. Blends can be made of different colours of the same fibre or different types of fibre, e.g. Cashmere and lambswool and Silk. The original Lovat mixture was created from a blend of light blue, bright yellow, dark yellow, brown and white. Such a blend is known as a ‘mixture’ and mixtures of this type are a traditional characteristic of Scottish textiles. After teasing, the wool is fed into a hopper and from there it goes into a carding machine which mixes and straightens all the fibres in preparation for spinning. Carding converts a continuous web of fibres into individual ribbons of specified weight per unit of length. These ribbons are known as rovings. It is an age-old process and has changed so little that one of the carding machines bought by James Johnston for his mills in 1868 was still working satisfactorily up to 1993 when it was finally replaced. Rovings then have to spun to convert them into yarn. Spinning, twists the fibres together to give them strength is carried out in two ways: on a mule which is the direct descendant of Arkwright’s famous Spinning Jenny, or on a ring spinning frame. The thickness of the yarn is decided at this stage by drawing the rovings out to a pre-determined degree. Many different regional systems of measurement of yarn thickness were developed in the early years of British textile industry and some of these are still used today. Depending on the end use, the resulting yarn may be piled together several times. The yarn is automatically checked for evenness at frequent intervals throughout the carding and spinning process.
Types of weave
The weaving of Johnston’s scarves, stoles and rugs requires the use of specialist techniques to insert ‘leno’ or ‘puggie’ threads, which bind the edges of the finished product. Fringes formed by leaving unwoven a section of warp thread, which is then divided and twisted to form the distinctive rolled fringe. This process used to be done by hand but is now fully automated.
Finishing
When cloth has been woven it is known as a ‘web’. Its appearance is rough and it then has to be ‘finished’. There are many processes involved in transforming the web into a luxurious finished product, many of which have remained unchanged for hundreds of years. Scouring removes oil, grease and dirt while ‘milling’ shrinks and thickens the fabric. Now carried out by machine, this was originally achieved by stamping on the fabric in water, thus the old Scottish term ‘waulking’. After wet finishing the fabric is held out to a given width and then dried by passing it over heated rollers in a tentering machine. In the 19th century and earlier, before these machines were available, fabric was hung up on hooks in the open air, giving rise to the expression ‘to be on tenterhooks’, later ‘to be on tenderhooks’. Depending on the end use of the fabric, further finishing processes are carried out, such as cropping, raising and pressing before final inspection. There is a special raising process only carried out on cashmere. The dried heads of the teasel plant are placed between metal bars, which are fixed round a large revolving drum. When the teasel heads are wet, they become flexible and the hooked ends gently tease out and align the cashmere fibres to produce the characteristic ripple finish. Man can fly to the moon, but can’t find a replacement for the humble teasel. Scarves, stoles and rugs are cut, folded and stored in the warehouse until required when they are labelled, embroidered and bagged, prior to despatch to customers worldwide.
Knitwear
Johnston’s knitwear is manufactured at their Mill in the border town of Hawick, the heart of the knitwear industry. Most of the products are made from Johnston’s own yarns with the introduction recently of fine cashmere/silk yarn for the spring and summer collections. The Johnston’s knitwear collection is fully fashioned, which means each garment is knitted to shape to give the best fit. The ribbed trimmings, cuffs, collars, welts, pockets and straps are knitted first on specialised machines, which create the essential tensioned construction required, particularly for the cuffs and welts to preserve the shape of the garment in wear. These ribs are transferred to the main frames which knit the fronts, backs and sleeves, either plain or worked into a variety of textured or multi-coloured designs such as stripes and intarsias. Once completed, the main elements are linked together stitch to stitch, single- needle seamed for a low profile finish of neatness and comfort and finally bar-tacked at the stress points for added strength. The garment, now virtually formed, is carefully washed and milled using the soft local water from the River Teviot in Hawick to remove any remaining impurities and oils and to create the soft characteristic cashmere touch. Following a first press, the collars are then linked to the garment. Buttoning and button holing are completed and much of the finishing touches such as sewing the point of the vee are done by hand.