The Silent Weaver (24 page)

The grand Victorian sprawl of Inverness District Lunatic Asylum, later Craig Dunain Hospital, early in the 20th century

Angus MacPhee: ‘He wouldn't talk to anyone in the ward. He would ... start gathering all the different things that, you know, the grasses, and then he would weave them. He did it, and that was that.'

Sowing pouches woven by Angus from grass (Norman MacLeod/Taigh Chearsabhagh)

Horse's harness (Norman MacLeod/Taigh Chearsabhagh)

Faded and misshapen by time, Angus's giant grass and wildflower sweater (Norman MacLeod/Taigh Chearsabhagh)

A grass creel or pouch (Norman MacLeod/Taigh Chearsabhagh)

A wader, as worn in its more usual waterproof form by anglers in Highland lochs (Norman MacLeod/Taigh Chearsabhagh)

A rope of grass and beech leaves (Norman MacLeod/Taigh Chearsabhagh)

A pair of grass and flower boots, ‘like three-dimensional drafts of a still life by Van Gogh' (Norman MacLeod/Taigh Chearsabhagh)

A pair of ‘large but perfectly functional' beech-leaf sandals (Norman MacLeod/Taigh Chearsabhagh)

‘Nurses say he sometimes chooses not to reply to people. He looks after his own needs. He is very clean and tidy. He reads newspapers' (Tim Neat/Joyce Laing)

Joyce Laing: ‘Once I said, I want a hat, Angus. Make me a hat. And of course he ignored me as he always did. I went away and had lunch and so on, went back and he wasn't there. He'd gone away somewhere in the grounds. But he'd left what he was working on, and there was this Davy Crockett hat …' (Joyce Laing)