The What...

Here at Gillian Kyle we design and manufacture a whole range of unique gifts with a Scottish flavour; from kitchen textiles, mugs & coasters, greetings cards to clothing. All our ranges have a strong but playful Scottish identity and we get particularly excited by Scottish nostalgia. We have designed some products in conjunction with iconic Scottish brands such as Tunnock's, Barr's and Glenfiddich, and even have some celebrity fans, including Tilda Swinton (an Oscar winner, no less!).

Meet some of the skilled and lovely people we have the pleasure of working with to produce our ranges;

The Why...

As a Scottish design company, passionate about our roots & about the quality of our products, we are committed to manufacturing our ranges in Scotland and the UK. As you may well know, this can be challenging and expensive, but we think it’s worth it in order to ensure the best possible quality and to support British jobs. It also means that we have good, strong relationships with the talented people that make our products, and that we can guarantee that what we create is always made in excellent labour conditions. We’re also committed to making products with organic & recycled materials – if you’d like to read why we feel this is the best decision, please read our Why Organic page.

So, what’s this screen printing we keep mentioning? 

Screen printing is a traditional printing technique which allows the printer to put our design onto our tea towels, aprons etc within a couple of seconds. First of all they have to create a screen for each of Gillian’s designs. The screen is made of a finely woven mesh stretched over a rectangular frame of aluminium (you can see all the screens being stored in the photo in the middle). Areas of the screen are then filled in with a non-permeable material, to form a stencil – therefore the open spaces (where the design is) are where the ink will appear.

The screen is then placed securely on top of the garment, and the ink is put on top of the screen and then wiped evenly from top to bottom with a roller so that it is pushed through the screen and reaches the cloth beneath. This technique results in a beautiful clear print with a great finish & texture, and the use of water based inks is not only good for the environment but also gives a much softer feel to the touch. You can see Kieran and the lads printing some items in the photos above – a skilled job and requires a bit of muscle when doing it by hand!

How & where are the other products made?

Our greetings cards are printed onto recycled (& FSC certified card) in the outskirts of Glasgow, by Alec, who uses a German antique press.  Alec has worked for this same family printing firm since he started as an apprentice in 1971 (yup, that’s not a typing error!). Our foil cards are traditionally printed on a Heidelberg platen - although originally from Germany, it has been here for over 40 years and has definitely earned its Scottish citizenship.

Our ever popular range of t-shirts and baby clothing come from down south, and are each hand screen printed in the north of Glasgow, by John and his team of expert clothing printers. The blank t-shirts are all organic where possible and are printed and then put into the dryer to set the inks. The quality of the fabrics, the ink and the craftsmanship in the printing give us clothing that washes well, time and time again.

The beautiful fine bone china mugs in our range are from a great wee company located in the historic heart of the UK ceramics industry; Stoke-on-Trent.  They employ a highly skilled workforce and are one of the few remaining businesses in the area (and in the country) capable of doing this kind of work to such a high standard. The use of fine bone china gives all the mugs their crisp whiteness and slight translucency – and, throwing modesty completely out of the window, they look great with our designs fired on them.