Juliette has always had a love of Textiles and her passion for them started from a young age - from early creativity with stitch to working in a fabric shop throughout her teenage years. After attaining a Design degree and teaching qualifications, Juliette lectured in Textiles and Design for many years, sharing her passion with a wider audience whilst developing her own archive of sketchbook creativity which has now been realised in our beautiful linen fabric collections.
On investigating her genealogy, Juliette was delighted to discover family ties with the textile industry from as far back as the late 1700s when brothers James and John Clark* were involved in the weaving industry and James Clark (junior) started out selling linen thread.
Throughout the 1800s the Clark family became well established in the thread industry** as J. & J. Clark & Co. and, joined by other family members, they eventually set up the well known Anchor Mills factory in Paisley.
The picture below looks like a painting on first glance but it is actually created with tiny stitches of Clark threads to show off their superior quality for an exhibition in 1879 (see pic at top for close-up). Displayed in the hall of our family home for many years, it has been really quite special to learn about the family connection to the textile industry.
Eventually J. & J. Clark, merged with their fierce competitors J. & P. Coats to form Coats and Clark and were ultimately bought out by Coats (in 1896) whch still exists today.
We feel honoured to continue the family connection to Textiles, now with our sustainable linen, which links us right back to the early 1800s when James Clark (junior) started out selling his linen thread!
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* Juliette's great (x 5) grandfathers on her mother's side
**using cotton sewing thread as in 1806 the weaving business was hit by Napoleon's Berlin Decree which banned exports to Britain, greatly hampering the movement of silk