Two Spring Ridge farmers are helping save the dying tradition of weaving by teaching Malaysian students the skills and knowledge to keep the practice alive in their home country.
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Siblings Marie and Fred Lawson have just hosted a group of 25 students from the South-East Asian country, where they spent two weeks honing their skills on looms using cloth at Crofters Mill on the property “Jemajo”, before taking them back to their home villages to pass on.
The opportunity for the Lawsons to teach weaving came about by chance when some Malaysian students travelled from Queensland to look at Highland cattle the Lawsons were selling.
They also breed Irish donkeys and clydesdale horses.
Just before they left, the students were invited to look in Fred’s shed where there were looms and weaving work – his hobby.
“They were gobsmacked when they saw our collection of looms and said we were exactly the kind of people they had been seeking to help pass on weaving skills,” Fred said.
It sparked their interest and so began a partnership with the Andante Foundation - a charitable organisation founded in Malaysia that aims to train and equip the emerging generation with skills in leadership through education, health and wellness, entrepreneurship, technology, social and community programs and activities.
Last year, two groups of Malaysian nationals visited the Lawson’s Spring Ridge farm with another group recently completing a course.
Marie said weaving started as a hobby when they both attended a weaving course at Gunnedah TAFE 20 years ago and was now a passion where their skills were passed on.
“It’s a full-on, non-stop course to try and get them [Malaysain students] to learn as much as they can,” Marie said.
“We start with a cardboard loom, and learn the basic weave before moving to a table loom and floor loom.”
Andante International Foundation recognised that skills like weaving in Malaysia were being lost as the world industrialised.
Looms were brought to Borneo by the early British colonists but that craft or skill had withered away as the need for weaving had been taken over by industrialised fibre production.
“It seems everything is made in China these days, except for heaven and earth,” Andanta’s Joys Tan said.
It’s not just weaving the students learn.
The last group of Malaysians also recently got an insight into horse handling and visited the Quirindi Heritage Village where they experienced leather plaiting and woodturning.
For Fred and Marie, it’s been a rewarding experience.
“We’ve now got a beautiful Malaysian family,” Marie said.
“We give all our services for free. We just get the enjoyment of passing on the weaving because it is dying in Australia as well.”
Fred and Marie have a busy life outside the Malaysian visits, keeping up with orders to weave tartans, mainly within Australia.
In 2012, they collaborated to weave a Victorian tartan which was presented to the Queen for her Jubilee.
The siblings have also just designed a tartan for the Quirindi Catholic Parish and are working on an order for a Victorian Highland Pipe Band Association.
They use superfine wool and other yarn from Victoria and meet orders for scarves, shawls and wedding sashes.
Scottish blood is in Fred and Marie’s veins with their grandfather Jim Lawson and his wife Eleanor coming to Australia in 1927 to help run their great uncle’s guesthouse in Murrurundi.
They say they breed the horses and design and create the tartans as a hobby and it seems to be pure satisfaction.
“You can sit and weave anything, but to get the traditional tartan the way it should be you’ve got to keep to your weaving set,” Marie said.
“It’s much easier to weave one colour of cloth than to weave checks and keep the sequence.”
