Don’t Overthink It With Edelina Noyce & Paul Noyce
Edelina Noyce and Paul Noyce, artists, makers, collaborators, welcome.
Relocating to the Isle of Skye, Edelina and Paul co-founded The Skye Textile Mill in Dunvegan, not simply to make textiles, but to explore what making means when heritage machines and textiles collide. From the beginning, their practice has been informed by past textile processes, the industrial legacy of wool and vintage machines as a framework within a contemporary context for craft.
The Skye Textile Mill produces textiles that reflect an understanding of material and place, a creative commitment between heritage and modernity. Central to the Mill is its collection of restored vintage machinery, including original Victorian knitting machines dating back to the late 19th century. Belt-driven and mechanical, these machines define the pace and integrity of the process, embedding within each piece a direct continuity between past industry and present making.
Responsibly sourced wool yarn is carried through an unbroken lineage of making and motion of restored belt‑driven machinery. Each thread is drawn, looped and interwoven through successive stages of production, Edelina and Paul’s textiles embody touch, pace, purpose and place.
The machinery in motion is mesmerising, yarn spins and loops loop, metal teeth and wheels click and thrum in hypnotic rhythm, colours and layers in musical orchestration. The machines dictate pace, discipline, and demand attention. In their shared practice with these mechanisms, yarns, words, movement, a dedication of care and the craft of making, process and place are working together.
At the Skye Textile Mill, the connection between landscape, method, and object is immediate, wool yarn and the hum of machines, recalibrating a sense time and motion. The spellbinding nature of wool and machine has been cast.
Edelina and Paul Noyce are my guests on this series of Don’t Overthink It. The aim, to connect with Creatives on the Isle of Skye and discover their who, what, why and more.
Don’t Overthink It - Edelina Noyce & Paul Noyce
1. Why wool?
Edelina: Because natural fibre is for winter. I love textures, colour and natural fibres.
Paul: Wool is an incredible fibre. Its natural, its necessary and its warm! The draw to wool is a combination of both its technical properties and its feel. Soft in feel, it keeps the body warm significantly more than acrylics or other synthetics. Wool wicks moisture with an incredible efficiency, allowing the body to regulate its temperature naturally, but at the same time its soft but strong, fire retardant (not like synthetics that must be kept away from fire) and its very sustainable. On top of all this, it doesn’t create microfibres, instead when it is finished, it can simply be composted.
2. Your connection to the Isle of Skye where and when did it begin?
Edelina: It is also a special place for me; it reminds me of that special time we had together when we started our new life together.
Paul: Skye has a very personal feel for us, we came here on our honeymoon, and we always held it very dear in our hearts. We visited several times in the following years and decided in the end, that was the place we wanted to be.
3. Your one word to describe the Isle of Skye, what is it?
Edelina: Interesting.
Paul: Peaceful.
4. Picture this, it’s summer on the Isle of Skye, the wind and rain vertical, you are standing in your favourite place, where is it and what are you
Edelina: In the bed, with the electric blanket on, watching and listening to the rain on the window.
Paul: This is my favourite weather, especially with wind and rain. My perfect place is dressed up in my waterproofs walking over the hills, with the wind and rain in my face, then pausing and listening to it blowing through the trees.
5. Today, tomorrow, yesterday, what inspires you to create?
Edelina: Today is about conscientiously creating something that is creative, natural, and reflects my artistic expression as the maker. Seeing and hearing the machine work, inspires me to use them in new versatile ways. I love that they can continue to run with their original purpose but using them in a sustainable manner. Its incredibly motivating seeing the waste wool that is composted but at the same time watching them powered using solar panels for electric, knowing that we have combined the old with the new, traditional with innovation, with zero carbon footprint. Tomorrow, is about creating something new and meaningful, that takes today into the future.
Paul: Perspective, remembering the journey of the past and forging a future, whilst preserving the things that made our past special. Yesterday:For me, seeing the old Victorian mills, the machines, the belts and pulleys, the ingenuity and creativity in the ways the machines move and work. It saddens me to see the old mills which once played a key part in our industrial age, slowly grinding to a halt, then going into dereliction. They were not innovated, but just ripped down and finished.
My grandfather designed the Griffin engine in the Spitfire aeroplane, and from a young age, he taught me engineering. This passion for technical detail, combined with valuing our past, knowing that our pretty little country was the first one to design these special woollen mills, this greatly inspires me.
Today. Because of the yesterday, this motivates me in the today. Having our little mill, we can use the machines how they would have been working before (not just demonstrating them, but using them properly). Hearing them and watching them work, is incredibly motivating.
Tomorrow. Proving that old machines can still be used for tomorrows knitwear, but using traditional techniques, preserving craft and machines, keeping the knowledge alive.
6. Yes, or no?
Edelina: Yes.
Paul: Yes.
7. What comes first in actualising your ideas and designs?
Edelina: The texture, colour, fashion and usability.
Paul: First part in the design, Edelina creates the colour pallet and the product design. She identifies how the fabric needs to be made, with which fibre and with what colour pallet. I then turn this concept into fabric on our heritage knitting machines (which will soon to be driven by a live steam engine). After the fabric is made, Edelina then scours, sews and finishes the product.
8. What is the significance of ‘tread lightly’ in your practice?
Edelina: As we do the whole process, not just the fabric but the whole process from beginning to the end, then the product finishing process is the most challenging, as this includes the scouring process (fabric post production process). All the temperatures have to be right. If this is wrong, it all goes wrong!
Paul: The sock machine is super delicate in settings. It is easy to spend 6 or 8 hours fixing the results of a little tweak that went wrong.
9. What brings the freedom, joy, and stillness, describe yourself in those moments?
Edelina: Freedom & Joy: to be creative in photo’s and videos. I also really enjoying listening to music. Stillness: Looking out the window, watching the sun go down and reflecting on life.
Paul: Freedom: The feeling of freedom comes when I stand on the side of a mountain, dressed up warm, with slight light rain in the air. I love the fresh air and cool rain in my face, its everything I associate to mountains, rural living and space.
10. What book are you reading or writing or listening to?
Edelina: I don’t read any particular books, but I like reading new cooking recipes and learning how people do mixed media art.
Paul: I’m not much of a book reader, so if I read, it tends to be technical. I read quite a lot of books on textile technology. But as a keen radio ham and sustainable engineering bod, I love to find out more about taking my house off grid, sustainable water treatment and heritage machinery.
11. What lies and reveals itself in the landscape to connect your work to place?
Edelina: Colours. In the same place but in different seasons, you get different colours. The dynamics in the weather and the landscape motivates and inspires the colours our works.
Paul: Colours! During the summer, when there is rain but sun at the same time, the clouds create an incredible blend of oranges, reds and even browns, as the colours interact with moisture in the air and the colours that reflect off the ground. This reflects in our works.
12. Your relationship with textiles and heritage textile machinery, describe it?
Edelina: For me it was when I was 9 years old, my mum taught me how to sew things together by hand. This created a flare for textiles, spending hours and hours altering my clothes. The heritage machinery started when I went round to different places with my husband, visiting different museums. I was very impressive seeing how the old steam engines and machinery is preserved and still in working condition.
Paul: Everything. Since a young child, machines, engines, and steam engines has been a consistent influence. It was normal to go to steam rallies exhibiting stationary engines or visiting textile mills and watching all the machinery work, it started as an interest but became a passion. The combination of technology which has all the logical operation and technical ingenuity, mixed with the creativity of colours and sensory feel of textiles, this really inspired me. I always dreamed of a steam powered textile mill, which hopefully we will do!
13. What question would you ask yourself, share the answer?
Edelina: With all the AI and new technology, I wonder how craft in the future will be valued, or whether it will be lost and replaced with electronic creative art , automated by machine. Will people still know the difference and appreciate the past?
I think that people will become even more wow’d by new technology and new innovation in textiles, and no longer give time or value to older methods and crafts. However, I think that sadly, as they no longer value the past crafts, probably these will one day no longer be known, except by reading in books about it. Unfortunately most books only talk about the life of textile workers, not the technology itself, so may be it will be lost forever one day.
Paul: Will the next generation of people appreciate the older technology and crafts, if they only know automated modern knitwear?
I think that one day, people will become so tired of automated technology and AI, that the creative arts will come back as a human expression. However, I think that probably this will be in the form of hobby hand made items only. I think slowly there will be less and less information on the internet or other media, regarding how the old industrial textile machines actually worked, even though the UK was the initiator of the industrial revolution. In such a short period of time already, so much information has been lost. For example, our mill may be one of the only places in the uk with working sock machines of this gauge. Probably I’m one of just a small handful of people within Europe that still has a working knowledge of how to operate and maintain these machines.
One day, unless a new generation arises who values our industrial archaeology, these machines will probably end up on scrap heaps with nobody knowing how they work, and will be forever lost.
Thank you, Edelina and Paul Noyce my super vintage woolly creatives.