Luther Hooper and Harris Tapestry Weavers

I stumbled across someone online who had been researching some relatives from Harris as I was wondering who "Miss Clive Bayley" was, having been highlighted for her tapestry (in my post Peasants at the Woman's Exhibition, 1900).  I believe the Harris weavers identified as living in Bushey were working for Luther Hooper at The British and Irish Spinning and Weaving School branch school in Bushey, which he refers to his biography (online here): "In 1901 I returned to London in order to design for and superintend a small tapestry-weaving industry at Bushey, a branch of weaving I had not hitherto studied: here I remained for rather more than a year and then removed to Haslemere".

Harris Tweeds
for sale today online here

It is interesting to see that the weavers of Harris were learning in Bushey from Hooper.  This then made me wonder, is Harris Tweed the only continuing British weaving industry from c.1900?  Should we look to the Harris Tweed company to see how the Haslemere Peasant Arts movement might have looked today?  Looking online I can see that there are many interesting stories to uncover in this area, if you had the time to look.  There is a short recording of the Harris weaver Marion Campbell at the loom on Youtube here.

Harris Tweed, History internet pages here

Peter Kerr writes that (on his blog here, Tapestry Weavers, 5 December 2010):


"Four young ladies from Harris who in 1901 were employed as Tapestry Weavers.  What made this surprising was that the young ladies, aged from 15 to 25, were all credited with having been born in Obbe, Scotland but at the time of the census were boarders in the house of a 40 year-old Metropolitan Police Constable in Bushey, Hertfordshire....Three more from Obbe but this time at 34 Silvester Terrace in Bushey, the Head of Number 32 being a local man, George Corney who was a Master Baker.  Of this dozen, two are Blind and one is Deaf & Dumb.  Three of the Tapestry Weavers are 17 & 18 year-old young ladies from 'Obbe, Harris, North Britain'.

Marion Campbell, Harris weaver
from Isabella Whitworth's blog here

from Isabella Whitworth's blog here

Marion Campbell, from Hebrides.com here

"So a total of seven female Tapestry Weavers from Harris, all specifying their birthplace as 'Obbe', were possibly working together but for whom and where is uncertain for, unhelpfully, the Baker lists the ladies relationship to him not as 'Boarder' or 'Lodger' but as 'Weaver'.  I suspect that George was the landlord for the ladies at number 34, for it is clearly a separate household but the first person on the list is not shown as the Head of the Household which is the expected practice."

The two houses are home to George, his Wife and their Niece together with a Domestic Servant and no less than six Tapestry Weavers, four Carpet Weavers and two more who appear as Mixed Weavers."

Obbe, Isle of Harris