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A working notebook from our Belgian linen mill — Kortrijk, late June, the room temperature 17°C and the looms running.
The Lys river runs through Kortrijk and through every linen story in West Flanders. For close to a thousand years the river has been the place flax is retted — left to soak so the woody outer stem rots away from the long bast fibres inside. The river still does this best.
Day one
The mill we work with is small enough that the manager, Hubert, knows every loom by sound. He opened our crate of yarn from the spinner and held a strand to the morning light. "This one will weave," he said, and walked it down the row.
The slow loom
Linen of this quality cannot be rushed. Our cloth runs at thirty metres of finished fabric per loom per day. A faster modern loom would do four times as much, but the warp would tighten, the slubs would smooth out, and the linen would lose what makes it linen.
What the season brings
For autumn we have woven a heavier weight — 280 grams per square metre — for the Kuro Dress and the Kazari Tote. It will hold its shape through ten years of wear, then soften into a second life.