Emily Quinn

Emily Quinn studied Printed Textiles at Edinburgh College of Art graduating in 1999 with first class honours. She continued her time at ECA for a further year in residency teaching broadly across fashion, textiles and jewelry disciplines in the School of Design and Applied Arts. A subsequent part-time lectureship followed for a further four years teaching textile print on the undergraduate programme.

Emily set up her first business Emily Quinn Printed Cashmere with a Start Up Award from the Scottish Arts Council in 2000 specialising in the design and production of screen printed, fully fashioned cashmere garments for the textile and fashion industry. It was during this time, having been headhunted by Pringle’s then Managing Director Kim Winser, Emily embarked on a two-year contract with Pringle Scotland designing and producing the printed knitwear garments for their international collections. This led to a deeper knowledge of printing fully fashioned knitwear through traditional screen print processes. The methodology has been developed since 1998 through consultancy, design, collaboration and production for industry. During this time, she worked with many designers and mills including Todd & Duncan, Brora, Hussein Chalayan, Elspeth Gibson, Gharani Strok, Bruce Oldfield amongst others, selling limited edition designs across Asia, Europe and the US.
A move to the Scottish Borders in 2003 with her young family brought Emily closer to the knitwear mills and local textile industry. While producing printed silk wallcoverings for the Dorchester’s Oliver Messel Suite at the School of Textiles in 2005, she was alerted to a vacancy as Subject Leader in Visual Studies. The full-time lectureship and a postgraduate in Academic Practice started in the Autumn the same year. In 2008 Emily moved to her specialist area of printed textiles taking the role of Assistant Professor in Printed Textiles and Research. She continues to lecture across the undergraduate Design for Textiles programme and currently co-leads the MA Fashion and Textiles programme.
Throughout her career in design education, Emily has continued her practice as a textile designer working closely with industry partners; The central theme of her research and practice is towards the re-invigoration/re-appropriation of heritage textiles, particularly of Scottish provenance, made suitable for a contemporary global market. In 2010 Emily and her partner Jason Lee won an award from the Cultural Enterprise Office programme Starter for 6 and set up luxury Scottish design label Jaggy Nettle and subsequently Made in Grey Britain. Both labels are stocked in Japan, Europe and the US. In 2016, they took ownership of the old Lyle and Scott hosiery mill in Hawick and are currently undertaking a refurbishment to create design studios, a print room and showroom for both labels. The couple have collaborated with Novesta, Hancock, Faber & Faber, Johnstons Cashmere, Dixon Avenue Basement Jams, Salon de Shimaji, WWF and Eland International.
More recently Emily has been developing new work on paper and other substrates as ‘one-off’ pieces for exhibitions, most recently as part of the ‘This Will Ruin Everything’ exhibition curated by Recoat at the Lighthouse in Glasgow. Drawing from the locally rich source of her adopted home in the Scottish Borders, the decline of the textile industry and the associated people, skills, knowledge and traditions holds a genuine interest for her and it is her aim to produce a new visual commentary using graphic print, illustration and collage approaches. This new work aims to provide a commentary on the societal and economic issues that co-exist within a community, examining how the fabric of life is inextricably intertwined within the indigenous textiles produced in a certain locale. The historical material from the archive is brought back to life and re-told through the displacement and re-representation through both traditional and innovative print technologies.

Emily has received funding for specific projects from the Scottish Arts Council, Cultural Enterprise Office, The Scottish Seed Fund and UK Trade and Investment. Her work is internationally renowned; featured in both British and international publications/press and television/radio broadcasts and exhibited in London, Berlin, Milan and New York. Previous research outputs have been categorised (as classified in RAE 2008) and (as classified in REF 2014) and disseminated within new ranges for national and international companies. Research cited in National/International publications including: British and Italian Vogue, ID, WWD Japan, and Elle Decoration.