Page 243 - Homes & Interiors Scotland

BEHIND CLOSED DOORS

Mourne Textiles produced unique fabrics for fashion houses
including Liberty, working with fashion designers like Sheila
Mullally.
Gerd’s daughter Karen went to college in Norway and went
on to study interior design in Belfast. After a spell in Dublin she
moved back to Mourne with her son. “My mother had a loom
in our living room in Dublin when I was a baby,” recalls Mario.
He tracked it down recently and the loom is now back in the
Mourne workshop. Karen kept the mill going, recreating her
mother’s designs and working on her own new ones. For a spell,
during the Troubles, the Mill went into a period of hibernation –
the tourist buses stopped coming and production slowed down
– but Karen offered workshops and kept the looms running.
When Gerd died, Karen decided to overhaul the mill with an eye
to increasing production, and Mario joined the family business
full time.
Mario studied fine art and textiles at Winchester and has

[Previous page, clockwise] Hand-woven
throws from the current range at Mourne
Textiles; publicity photos from the s in
the workshop; Karen Hay-Edie weaving a
Milano rug at the workshop in the Mournes; a
Norwegian hand loom imported from Norway
in the early s and still in use today
[Opposite, clockwise] Hand-woven cushions
all originally designed in the s, now back in
production; Sybil Connolly’s clutch coat used
Mourne’s ‘Shaggy Dog’ Tweed design as part of
her Winter collection; the Milano rug uses
natural white unspun fleece and black woollen
yarn woven on a linen warp with visible fringing
at each end; handweaving the rug was done
by looping the woollen yarn over chopsticks to
create the raised texture effect; hand-woven
placemats in Mourne Check

© Tara Fisher

© Tara Fisher

HOMES & INTERIORS SCOTLAND