Meet the Makers: Helen Ruth from Helen Ruth Scarves

The creation of the Pink Castle collection was inspired by the reopening of the iconic Craigievar Castle after the 18-month Pink Again conservation project. Here, we speak to Helen Ruth from Helen Ruth Scarves, who has created some very special designs for us.

Hi Helen, tell us a little about yourself and your business.

I live and work in Aberdeen, and my design studio is in Deemouth Artist Studios in the Torry area of the city.

I studied Textiles at Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen, specialising in printed textiles, and in my final year I designed a range of scarves using my illustrations. After graduating in 2008 and carrying out several placements in design studios, I wanted to start my own brand so I could have the freedom to design things I love. I now design and make printed scarves and accessories. I create all the hand-drawn elements of the prints, and hand finish the scarves in my studio.

I design illustrative textiles that have a narrative element to them, which is very much influenced by my upbringing in North East Scotland, being surrounded by wild landscape and creatures. I aim to present a contemporary take on traditional Scottish themes and motifs through my textiles, all the while creating covetable accessories in joyful vibrant colours.

How did you approach the creation of the Pink Castle collection?

This was a very exciting project for me to work on, as I grew up very close to Craigievar Castle and attended the primary school just along the road. So I already have lots of wonderful memories and a personal connection to the castle, which immediately gave me ideas to get started with.

But I also wanted to include historical references, details from the interior architecture and significant artefacts from inside the castle – so I arranged a site visit to gather imagery and ideas. I particularly loved the ceramics collection and the incredible carved fireplace surround in the main hall. This gave me loads of ideas, and I started sketching out an idea for the scarf, drawing detailed motifs to use in the design. The colours were really important too, as part of the brief was to work with the shades that had been carefully selected for the newly designed Pink Castle tartan. I wanted the silk scarf to sit beautifully alongside this in the whole Pink Castle collection.

The main challenge was the fact the castle was still closed for restoration when I went to visit! There was scaffolding around the castle and we could only access a small part of the building, which was also very dark. It was difficult to get good photos of my own but fortunately there is a huge library of images in the National Trust for Scotland database and I was able to use those.

Can you describe the journey of taking the designs from concept to finished product?

The design started with my hand-drawn illustrations using pen and paper. I sketched out a rough idea of the design in pencil, and then set about working on it with fine ink pens to create all the intricate detail. I’ve lately been working in large scale, drawing onto a roll of paper roughly the size of a finished scarf, so I can see how the design will look when complete. I like to work in a collage style – for example, some imagery was drawn on separate pieces of paper, cut out, repeated using a photocopier, and then assembled on the larger sheet of paper. This allows me to have some flexibility over the composition.

Once I was happy with the drawing, I had it scanned to create a digital version of the design. At this stage I used Photoshop to add the colour, make tweaks to the composition and collage in other drawn elements. The finished files were then sent to my printers, before being sent back to me as rolls of fabric to be turned into scarves.

All the printing is carried out at the Centre for Advanced Textiles, who are based at Glasgow School of Art. Although the designs are digitally printed, this is still a very ‘hands-on’ process and involves a lot of human interaction with the cloth and the machinery. It’s definitely a very skilled process that requires a huge amount of knowledge of the fabrics and dyes involved.