Adele's Mohair: a living tapestry of craft, colour and rural heritage

Octavia Avesca Spandiel spoke to Adele Cutten, founder of Adele's Mohair, to explore how a small spinning experiment grew into a thriving rural craft enterprise rooted in South Africa's rich mohair heritage.

- Octavia Avesca Spandiel

On a stretch of fynbos-rich farmland tucked between East London and Gqeberha, a workshop hums with colour. The air carries the scent of dye pots, the low chatter of rural women at work, and the gentle rustle of brushed mohair drifting in the breeze.

This is Adele's Mohair: a craft-driven enterprise grounded in South Africa's proud mohair heritage and in the belief that handmade work still has a vital place in modern life. Cutten says she founded the business in 1983, and the business has since grown from a solitary experiment with a spinning wheel into a rural craft economy supporting families, developing artisanal skills and celebrating the beauty of South Africa's 'noble fibre'.

While the enterprise now sells designer yarns across the country and abroad, its foundation remains unchanged: fibre, colour, creativity, and community woven into a story shaped over four decades. Cutten's journey began far from the Eastern Cape coastline. Soon after graduating, she travelled through Scotland and Wales. There she visited woollen mills, watched traditional weaving, and observed the centuries-old production of tweed.

But one encounter shaped her future. On the Isle of Harris, she met an elderly croft dweller, a woman of modest means who, astonishingly, was the now late Queen Elizabeth’s official tweed weaver. This woman collected wool caught on fences, washed and carded it herself, spun it on a wheel older than she was, dyed it with natural pigments, and produced fabrics of remarkable depth and character.

“That old woman sparked my imagination. She never made anything ordinary. Everything she touched had intention and value,” she says.