Skip to main content

Introduction

I am Ruth Black - a textile artist working along with my daughter and granddaughter in the Highlands of Scotland. 

"The Workshop"  is an old wooden building in the village of Inchmore, just 6 miles from Inverness in the Highlands of Scotland and dating from the mid 19th Century.  Originally it served as a joinery workshop but now it is home to a three-generation family team working with a variety of textile processes, fibres, fabrics, yarns and threads.

When we first took up occupancy of The Workshop in 2011 the main focus was to carry on our family business, Anna Macneil.

Anna Macneil (aka Barbara Morrison, 1929 - 2017) started making hats using Harris Tweed from her home on the Isle of Lewis when she moved there in the 1980s.   She was joined in this venture by me, her daughter, in the 1990s but she continued making hats until a combination of poor health and failing eyesight made it no longer possible. However, the business is still carried on by me with help from her granddaughter Mary and her great granddaughter Rachel, all of us having brought new skills, ideas and products to the business.  Read more about Anna Macneil on the website - www.annamacneil.scot

Meet the team:

Ruth Black

In addition to running the family business (Anna Macneil), I do various textile activities including feltmaking, weaving, embroidery and design.  At our Workshop I teach feltmaking when time allows, and I also go out and about to other venues to lead community art projects which involve feltmaking and other textile techniques.   My particular design speciality is in Celtic design whether that is incorporated as embroidery, felt or other techniques.  Read more on my website ~ Ruth Black - Textile Artist

Mary Wood

I help out in the family business, generally for a couple of days a week, and the rest of the time I am designing and making fabulous dresses and traditional steel-boned corsets, mostly using tartans and silks.  Everything I do is made to measure in fabrics of your choice and designed especially for you. My trading name is LochDress and you can see my work on my website  - www.lochdress.scot - if you can't make it out to The Workshop.


Rachel Wood

I work part-time in the family business and I am in the process
of starting my own complementery business - Brógan Brèagha (that's Gaelic for Beautiful Shoes) where I will be designing and making custom shoes that are made to fit perfectly - no more blisters!   It will be a while before I am able to start taking orders, but watch this space.....   www.brogan-breagha.scot


Labels:

Comments

  1. Unknown30 April 2020 at 15:18

    Gosh, wish I was back there to look in on your work shop. I used to live in the cottage next door as a child and often was in and around the workshop with the joiners son. A beautiful place and primary school.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ruth Black1 May 2020 at 01:04

      Well as soon as this corona virus situation has resolved, you will be very welcome to visit. The school has long-since closed with pupils now travelling to the big new school in Kirkhill. The buildings are still there - main building is now a stove showroom.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Guide to Commissioning a Liturgical Stole

This post is aimed at those who may never have purchased a stole before.  Perhaps you are preparing for ordination or maybe you are commissioning a stole as a gift.   There are so many possibilities for a stole that it is difficult for some people to know where to begin.   Here I try to guide you through the process and ask you to consider many different things so that you can arrive at the right decision when it comes to making that purchase or placing an order. The stole is an ecclesiastical vestment worn by ordained clergy in most western Christian traditions during church services. The wearing of stoles goes back to the very earliest times of the Church and references Jewish traditions as described in The Old Testament.   "And thou shalt make holy garments for Aaron thy brother for glory and for beauty" (Exodus 28:2).  It is a long, narrow strip of cloth, usually embellished in some way and is normally in the specified colour for the liturgical season - although some P
Post a Comment
Read more

Designing and Making Liturgical Stoles

The process of designing and making a stole has many steps.  In this post I hope to give an insight into what is involved so that you will understand how I work. The first step is a discussion with the client.  This might be in person at my studio or at a vestments fair at one of the theological colleges.  It might all be conducted through emails, or it might involve a combination of zoom chats and emails, with perhaps the odd telephone call as well.   Whichever way the discussions take place, the important thing is that we arrive at an outline of what the client wants that works with what I am able and willing to make. Designs often evolve through this discussion process.  A client might start off simply asking me to make a design exactly as they have seen in an earlier photo of my work, but then through discussion they become aware of different variations.     In one of my Google Photos albums I have posted photos of my Celtic Angel design so that you can see the huge range of design
Post a Comment
Read more

Garden felting

For a very few days each year the blue irises in our garden are in bloom while the marsh marigolds are still flowering.  The complimentary colours of yellow/gold and purple/blue  are wonderful to behold. We are enjoying a little heatwave just now so the other day I sat in the garden and did a little watercolour sketch of an iris.    And today I set about making an interpretation of these flowers in felt. The first step was to select my colours of merino wool fibres.  It was definitely a question of blending as nothing I had was quite right for the irises - which are somewhere between blue and purple.  I decided on the inlay method - that is, make some pre-felt for the various components of the piece and cut them into the various shapes that I wanted.  The process of painting the flowers is helpful because it helps to analyse how the flower is formed.  The iris has three petals that point up into a peak, three smaller petals that spread out horizontally and a further three large petals
Post a Comment
Read more