The name Edinburgh Weavers may conjure up a quaint old-fashioned hand-weaving workshop in the heart of the Scottish capital, making tartan or tweed. It was, in fact, an industrial manufacturer of luxury furnishing fabrics for curtains and upholstery, mostly machine-woven. Although barely remembered today, from the 1930s to the 1960s it was one of the most celebrated textile companies in the world.

Spearheaded for three decades by the inspirational Alastair Morton (1910-63), a gifted painter and textile designer, Edinburgh Weavers collaborated with many leading artists of the day, from the Constructivist painter Ben Nicholson in the 1930s, to pioneering abstract artists such as William Gear and William Scott after World War II, and produced distinctive fabrics for prestigious buildings such as the Royal Festival Hall in London and the British Embassy in Washington, D.C. "Beauty, the enjoyment of it and the expression of it, is as much part of man's nature as biological fitness or technical efficiency," asserted Morton in The Art of Weaving (1949). Passionately committed to these ideals, Morton harnessed Edinburgh Weavers as a vehicle for his own creativity and as a platform for other artists' talent. Although the company fell into obscurity following Morton's death in 1963, during its heyday, it was unrivaled in the field of artists' textiles.