A touch of the Kynoch 

One of the pleasures of looking through old copies of The Tailor & Cutter is to admire the fine advertisements created by British mills and cloth merchants. Among the most distinctive are those created for G & G Kynoch, of Isla Bank Mills in Keith, in what was Banffshire and is now Moray in the north-east of Scotland.

These days Keith is known more for its whisky distilleries than its textile producers, but the history of the Kynoch name can be traced back to 1788 when George Kynoch established in the town a bleachfield, where flax could be dried and lightened by sunlight.

Over the years, flax production was replaced by the manufacture of fine woollen cloths and by the early 20thcentury Kynoch was one of the pre-eminent names among Scottish manufacturers, having added scarves and rugs to its lengths of coatings, jacketings and suitings.

As these advertisements show, the company was no slouch when it came to promoting itself to the tailoring trade. All of those shown here appeared on the back cover of The Tailor & Cutter during 1939 – Kynoch had a Scottish terrier for its logo long before the Radley handbag company adopted one.

The consistent employment of the strong typeface for the Kynoch name, the Scottie logo and the clever use of red and black as the house colours made for a superb series of advertisements that still delight almost 80 years on.

Happily, the Kynoch business still thrives as part of the Bradford-based SIL Holdings group, which owns many of the best names in British textiles. It acquired the company in 2008 and today Kynoch’s fine woollen jacketings, suitings and coatings, which feature a distinctive Scottish handwriting, are woven in Langholm in the Borders.

Special thanks to Eric Musgrave for his fascinating pieces over the last year. We look forward to his profile next month and creating the suit of his choice, that we will proudly be making for him.
www.ericmusgrave.co.uk