A machine-woven wool blanket of the same size can be bought for €60. Ours are €340 to €700. It is a fair question to ask what the difference is, and we would rather answer it plainly than talk around it.
We price by loom-days
Every piece we make is priced by one number: how many days it spends on the loom. Not by the metre, not by what the market will bear, not by season.
- A scarf — about three days
- A flat-weave rug — two to three weeks
- A bed cover — up to a month
A power loom produces in an hour what a hand weaver produces in a week. That is the whole of the price difference. Everything else — the story, the provenance, the meaning of the motifs — is true, but it is not what you are paying for. You are paying for someone's month.
What happens before the loom
The loom-day count does not include the work that comes first, though the price has to cover it.
Fleece is sheared from highland sheep, washed, hand-carded and spun. Yarn is dyed in small batches over a fire with indigo, madder root, walnut husk, turmeric or saffron. Someone has to judge when the pot is right, and that judgement is not written down anywhere.
What happens after it
Panels come off the loom at about a forearm's width. To make a bed cover, three or four are joined by hand with a cross-stitch — slow, careful work that no machine does.
We use one thread colour for this on every piece, undyed cream, always the same gauge, always visible. It is our house mark. It also means the finishing is not something we can rush without it showing.
Why we publish the number
Two reasons.
The first is that it makes the price legible. €700 next to €430 with no explanation reads as arbitrary. €700 because it took most of a month reads as arithmetic.
The second is that it protects the weaver. When the price is tied to time rather than to volume, there is no commercial incentive to weave faster, thinner or looser. The number on the page is the same number the atelier works to.
What you actually get for it
A dense highland fleece that resists water and holds heat. Natural dyes that fade gently rather than going grey. A cloth built in panels, which means it can be repaired panel by panel rather than thrown away. And a piece that is not identical to anyone else's, because it cannot be.
Handwoven wool of this kind is bought once. That is not a marketing line, it is the economics: a €460 throw used for thirty years costs less per year than a €60 blanket replaced every three.