{"id":787,"date":"2026-04-19T11:20:41","date_gmt":"2026-04-19T11:20:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thequalityreview.com\/?p=787"},"modified":"2026-04-19T11:20:44","modified_gmt":"2026-04-19T11:20:44","slug":"in-rural-ireland-textile-weavers-offer-a-glimpse-of-acrafts-past-and-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thequalityreview.com\/?p=787","title":{"rendered":"In Rural Ireland, Textile Weavers Offer a Glimpse of a\nCraft’s Past and Future"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you want to get to know\u00a0Ireland<\/a>, there\u2019s no better way than to do so behind the wheel. Driving past the country\u2019s lush green fields, towering cliffs, and rugged coastline\u2014with an inevitable detour to a local pub\u2014is an experience that allows you not just to see, but truly connect with the heart of the country through its people. This is exactly what the co-founders of\u00a0Stable of Ireland<\/a>, Sonia Reynolds and Frances Duff, did 15 years ago, and in doing so had chance encounters that led them down a road to discovering some of the best Irish makers around the country.<\/p>\n

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The windswept hills of Donegal, Ireland, which is home to an abundance of traditional textile weavers<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

Traveling the length and breadth of Ireland\u2014circling the lunar-like landscape of The Burren in County Clare and traversing the untamed\u00a0countryside of Donegal<\/a>\u2014the pair encountered extraordinary people facing what had become an ordinary problem: the rapid disappearance of their craft. \u201cWe met with linen and wool weavers and were blown away by the exceptional quality and beauty of the cloth they produced, as well as the depth of [textile] history in Ireland,\u201d says Reynolds. \u201cWe were in equal measure concerned by the decline in the number of weavers. They mentioned that they were losing out to cheaper cloth from abroad and that Irish buyers were few and far between.\u201d<\/p>\n

The friends and business partners FIRST met working as models for renowned fashion photographer Mike Bunn. \u201cMike was deeply inspired by the Irish landscape and textures and clothing. As two redheads, he often used us for his own shoots styled with his wife Betty, which were about a visual celebration of what Irish style and the country meant to him,\u201d says Reynolds. \u201cIt was these early experiences that planted the seeds for the love of\u00a0all things Irish<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

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In 2014, the pair co-founded Stable of Ireland with a focus on traditional Irish textiles and weaving heritage: their debut collection was launched in a pop-up shop featuring unisex scarves in Irish linen and oversized herringbone fringed scarves woven by\u00a0Eddie Doherty<\/a>, a celebrated maker from Donegal. Two years later, they set up shop at The Westbury Mall, just off Grafton Street,\u00a0Dublin<\/a>‘s busiest pedestrian thoroughfare, and stocked it with Irish linen scarves in every color of the rainbow and tailored gilets and blazers made from handwoven tweed. The store, now in its tenth year, is designed like an artistic pied-\u00e0-terre, a place where you can linger and learn the stories behind each piece.<\/p>\n

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A check Irish linen piece from Stable of Irelan<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

It\u2019s those stories that anchor Stable of Ireland in its mission to champion the Irish textile industry by working with makers from remote corners of the country\u2014and through them, bring forgotten pieces of heritage into in a modern context. In the late 19th century, Ireland was the largest manufacturer of linen in the world, but the emergence of cheaper factories and synthetic fabric post-WWII led to the decimation of local industry; today, there are only a handful of Irish linen manufacturers left, even as the superior reputation of the fabric remains. And although wool also comes to mind when you talk about Irish textiles, the linen trade thrived at one time, too, in part, because of the suppression of Irish wool production, which the English saw as direct competition to their own industry.<\/p>\n

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The Inis Mea\u0301in Knitting Factory in the Aran Islands, which works with Oscar-nominated costume designer Eimer N\u00ed Mhaoldomhnaigh.<\/p>\n

That didn\u2019t stop the nation’s weavers working with wool, though: sweaters embedded with meaningful patterns and intricate Crios belts continued to be knitted quietly inside cottages, a homegrown effort to keep the craft alive. Take aran, which is arguably the most recognizable expression of this history, and was spotlighted in the Oscar-nominated film\u00a0Banshees of Inisherin<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by costume designer Eimer N\u00ed Mhaoldomhnaigh, who sourced striking wool designs that stole the show. These kinds of pieces continue to be crafted in the Aran Islands by the likes of the 50-year-old\u00a0Inis Me\u00e1in Knitting Company<\/a>, which is stocked in over 60 stores worldwide including Bergdorf Goodman in New York.<\/p>\n

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Knitwear produced by the Inis Mea\u0301in Knitting Co for its Autumn\/Winter 2024 collection<\/p>\n

Inis Mea\u0301in Knitting Company<\/span><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

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A moodboard at the Inis Me\u00e1in Knitting Company<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

And among the windswept hills of Donegal, efforts are underway to fortify another Irish fabric for the future: Donegal Tweed. The region is home to the largest concentration of tweed and wool weavers in Ireland, and they are currently in the final stages of securing Protected Geographical Status from the EU for the natural fibre twill\u2014just as Champagne from\u00a0the Champagne region of France<\/a>\u00a0has. This will eventually mean that only tweed made in Donegal will be allowed to be marketed as such, helping to prevent imitations and retain jobs. It’s a shift that directly supports the makers themselves\u2014something Stable of Ireland has long prioritized through its partnerships with producers like Eddie Doherty, Molloy and Sons, and Studio Donegal who create cloth for their tweed jackets, gilets, and coats.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

This article first appeared here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you want to get to know\u00a0Ireland, there\u2019s no better way than to do so behind the wheel. Driving past the country\u2019s lush green fields, towering cliffs, and rugged coastline\u2014with an inevitable detour to a local pub\u2014is an experience that allows you not just to see, but truly connect with the heart of the country through its people. This is exactly what the co-founders of\u00a0Stable of Ireland, Sonia Reynolds and Frances Duff, did 15 years ago, and in doing so had chance encounters that led them down a road to discovering some of the best Irish makers around the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":805,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-places"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/thequalityreview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/STABLE-of-Ireland-HANDWOVEN-CRIOS-BLANKET-.webp",2240,1260,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/thequalityreview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/STABLE-of-Ireland-HANDWOVEN-CRIOS-BLANKET--150x150.webp",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/thequalityreview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/STABLE-of-Ireland-HANDWOVEN-CRIOS-BLANKET--300x169.webp",300,169,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/thequalityreview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/STABLE-of-Ireland-HANDWOVEN-CRIOS-BLANKET--768x432.webp",768,432,true],"large":["https:\/\/thequalityreview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/STABLE-of-Ireland-HANDWOVEN-CRIOS-BLANKET--1024x576.webp",1024,576,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/thequalityreview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/STABLE-of-Ireland-HANDWOVEN-CRIOS-BLANKET--1536x864.webp",1536,864,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/thequalityreview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/STABLE-of-Ireland-HANDWOVEN-CRIOS-BLANKET--2048x1152.webp",2048,1152,true],"tiny":["https:\/\/thequalityreview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/STABLE-of-Ireland-HANDWOVEN-CRIOS-BLANKET--60x34.webp",60,34,true],"thumbnail-medium":["https:\/\/thequalityreview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/STABLE-of-Ireland-HANDWOVEN-CRIOS-BLANKET--480x384.webp",480,384,true],"thumbnail-square":["https:\/\/thequalityreview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/STABLE-of-Ireland-HANDWOVEN-CRIOS-BLANKET--480x480.webp",480,480,true],"thumbnail-portrait":["https:\/\/thequalityreview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/STABLE-of-Ireland-HANDWOVEN-CRIOS-BLANKET--480x600.webp",480,600,true],"thumbnail-large":["https:\/\/thequalityreview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/STABLE-of-Ireland-HANDWOVEN-CRIOS-BLANKET--720x480.webp",720,480,true]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Owen Fairbanks","author_link":"https:\/\/thequalityreview.com\/?author=6"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"If you want to get to know\u00a0Ireland, there\u2019s no better way than to do so behind the wheel. Driving past the country\u2019s lush green fields, towering cliffs, and rugged coastline\u2014with an inevitable detour to a local pub\u2014is an experience that allows you not just to see, but truly connect with the heart of the country…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thequalityreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thequalityreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thequalityreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thequalityreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thequalityreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=787"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thequalityreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":806,"href":"https:\/\/thequalityreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/787\/revisions\/806"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thequalityreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thequalityreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thequalityreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thequalityreview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}