Linen diaper weaving in 18th-century Scotland

‘The loom was there, and the weaving, and the growing pattern in the cloth.…’

These lines from the story of Silas Marner, the linen weaver of Raveloe at a moment when he had been robbed of his life savings, remind us of an essential trade of which there is now little trace, that of the customary weaver and the weaving of linen for the domestic household by hand.

Discussions with housewife or housekeeper of fanciful or hardwearing patterns for the many linens used at home, for example sheeting and towels, and the commissioning of regular orders of figured napery or table linen for the household no longer take place. But a rare weaver’s pattern book presently in the collections of the National Library of Scotland illustrates, on close to 70 pages, the vocabulary of patterns a journeyman weaver might learn, or a master weaver create for his customers. They are samples of a huge variety of patterns, now forgotten, based on fancy twills or ‘tweels’ where floats of yarn are extended to form diagonal patterns, which