As it
turned out, these deep-rooted beliefs changed his own destiny. At thirteen
years old, boys went to sea ‘to see if they would cut it’ as worthy
mariners. He went out on his father’s boat, and among the crew was an old
fisherman who was deeply religious and superstitious. They caught nothing that
night, and in the morning their boat lay empty while all the others were filled
with herring. The young Oliver was declared a ‘Jonah’ and told he must never darken
the vessel again. He was saved from a future of seasickness and left for
agricultural college in Aberdeen. On his return to the islands in 1967, his
mother helped him find a job working for John “Sheepie’ Smith, a crofter and
wool broker. Oliver began by hand sorting and grading the wool of the Shetland
sheep from the small family farm. He loved the work and quickly excelled, and he
has worked there ever since. “It’s a simple story, about a simple life,
but it’s an important one,” Oliver says. “My story is Shetland’s story.”
Today, Jamieson & Smith Shetland Wool Brokers buy Shetland
wool from over six hundred crofters and farmers on Shetland, and the
longstanding production of Fair Isle knitwear and yarns continues. They
exclusively use the yarn from the sheep on Shetland itself where
the wool is a superior quality, resulting from a combination of harsh windy conditions
and a unique diet of seaweed and heather. Leafing through the colour charts offered by Jamieson & Smith is like
reading this landscape through yarn. The heritage colours dyed with madder,
woad, and peat line up alongside the natural oily lanolin shades with wildflower
and mussel blue highlights.
TOAST knitwear designer
Emma Brooks travelled to Shetland last year to visit the Shetland Museum’s
textile archive and select yarn from Jamieson & Smith. Emma speaks about
the intricacy of the historic Fair Isle compositions with respect, explaining
how closely you have to look at a pattern to really understand its complexity.
The original knitter may simply have been using up leftover yarns, but sometimes
even spontaneous decisions can feel like decoding a message over time. Often, it’s the physical feel of the wool in
her hands that inspires her - she describes a small scrap she found that had
been overwashed almost to the point of felting, and how this unexpected hazing
of colours informed her palette.
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