Plate No. 024 · fabric

Tweed

Tweed is a rough, flexible woolen cloth, usually a twill, woven from yarns spun with mixed-color fibers that give the surface its flecked, heathered depth. It grew out of the working cloth of Scotland and Ireland, woven to shrug off wind and damp, and was taken up in the nineteenth century by sporting estates, each of which dressed its keepers in a distinctive estate tweed. Named tweeds mark their sources: Harris from the Outer Hebrides, Donegal from Ireland, Shetland and Cheviot from their sheep.