Willie Taylor, who was the last handloom weaver in the Mearns and was awarded the British Empire Medal in 1979, has died in a nursing home in Laurencekirk. He was 99.
Mr Taylor single-handedly kept alive the linen trade that once employed 200 weavers in his native Luthermuir.
He began working with James Winter of Laurencekirk in 1929. In 1937 Mr Winter died and the business was taken over by Keith Anderson’s of Dundee but closed in 1939 when war broke out.
It remained closed until 1947 when Anderson’s asked Mr Taylor if he would start up again.
Soon the looms were busy, mostly for Draffens of Dundee, who received their royal warrant after a commission from the Queen Mother for tableclothes.
In 1952 the firm closed ending three centuries of handloom weaving in Laurencekirk.
Mr Taylor set up in a shed at his home at Main Street, Luthermuir, which he shared with his brother, working by the light of a naked electric bulb and the heat from an iron stove.
When he made enough to fill a suitcase he took the bus to Montrose and knocked on doors until he had sold enough to live on. He built up a business and eventually had more orders than he could cope with.
He received orders from the San Jose Mission for plain linen altar clothes and when the US Navy communications base opened at Edzell in the 1960s it swallowed 75% of his output.
Mr Taylor, sitting at the 100-year-old Jacquard looms, with the sound of him throwing the shuttle, his feet pumping the pedals, had become part of history.
For four years he lived at Kirk Lodge Nursing Home, Laurencekirk. He is survived by his sisters Margaret Milne and Molly Roberts.