Spinning a Yarn - the rise and fall of flax in Scotland

Flax is one of the oldest textiles to be cultivated and processed by humans, but now makes up less than 1% of textiles produced globally. Several recent papers* highlight flax-linen as a high quality and climate beneficial textile, and recommend it as a replacement for the polluting and carbon intensive petrochemical textiles currently used in the fashion and composites industries.

Before seriously recommending the re-shoring of the flax industry as sustainable textile solution for Scotland, what lessons from the previous triumphs and failures of the flax and linen industry can we learn from history? What made flax one of Scotland’s most important industries of the late 1700s early 1800s, and completely disappear by the 1950s despite several state subsidised revival attempts?

From the birth of the industrial revolution to the rise of ultra fast fashion, textiles machinery has often been at the forefront of global economic, cultural and ecological shifts (and disasters). If we are to design the yarn spinning machines of the future, what culture and climate are we trying to create?

*(Nigam and Yadav, 2019, CDFA, 2025, Kozłowski and Muzyczek, 2023, Gomez-Campos et al, 2020, Stavropoulos et al, 2023).