Multi-talented creative works with responsive Scottish Textile Company
New Linen Designed by Claudia Escobar for Wes’Ray Textiles
Claudia Escobar is a multi-talented creative and award winning textile developer and designer. With an introduction to Jane McCann of Linen Biennale N.Ireland Claudia produced a 2018 range featuring in the PRONI Linen Biennale catwalk show using existing Chilean linen. Inspired to channel her considerable energy into a plan to see manufacture of new product by Peter Greg’s Kirkcaldy, Scotland’s only remaining linen factory. CEO Angus Nicol generously offered Claudia access to industrial plant to weave a short run of brand new textile.
Claudia is deeply rooted in notions of holistic sustainability so central to Our Linen Stories from Journeys in Design. Fervent in developing textile ways that work in tandem with nature, Claudia is experimenting with methods of weathering textile that don’t rely on chemicals tumbled with stones by machine. At our Leith 2019 Revisit, we presented Claudia’s virgin linen produced in Scotland and the results of her first experiment weathering textile by submersion in a Newhaven Harbour lobster pot.
Claudia Escobar has Polish and Chilean roots and has been a Leither for more than 15 years. Your curator first met Claudia at Our Linen Stories stall in Leith Farmers Market April 2018. Claudia had been encouraged to say hello by mutual friend Mary Moriarty. Mary is inextricably linked to Leith, in maritime and many other ways, through her charge of the Port o’ Leith Pub, Claudia having worked with Mary at this legendary venue.
Leith is Scotland’s first international Port, developed before Union when our East Coast ports were key to transporting goods and people to England, Europe and the Plantations of the Caribbean and Americas. Leith has also offered a new home for many migrants arriving in Scotland for the first time. Generations of new Scots have allowed the country to thrive including those from Ireland, India, Italy, Poland, Spain and countries throughout Africa, each of these examples including recent settlement in Leith but also those much longer established.
