Dyeing wool at Loch Carnan

Catherine MacInnes at Loch Carnan boiling wool and crotal in alternative layers to obtain a good dye. Crotal, scraped off the rocks, was used to produce a reddish brown colour. The pot was kept boiling for a few hours and the fleece then washed in the loch to take away the residue.

The photograph was taken by Werner Kissling (1895-1988), an ethnological photographer, who worked mainly in island and coastal communities in Scotland. He made one of the earliest Gaelic films, Eriskay: A Poem of Remote Lives (1935).

University of Edinburgh, School of Scottish Studies Archives: SSSA BVIII f2 2087