From Berry Farm to the North Road.

Jamieson & Smith is the wool broker of Shetland. Its business began, the company says, in the 1930s, when the Smith family of Berry Farm in Scalloway, on Shetland’s west side, started buying fleeces from local crofters. It was incorporated on 4 September 1951 as Jamieson and Smith (Shetland Wool Brokers) Limited, according to Companies House, which lists it as active in October 2026. In the 1960s it moved to its present home on the North Road in Lerwick, overlooking the harbour, where its buildings include wool sheds and a renovated church that now serves as its yarn shop. Its website trades under the name Shetland Wool Brokers.

It should not be confused with Jamieson’s of Shetland, a separate business. Jamieson’s trades through Jamieson’s Spinning (Shetland) Limited, incorporated in 1983 and registered at Sandness on the west of Shetland’s Mainland, according to Companies House, and it spins yarn on the islands. Jamieson & Smith is a wool broker and yarn brand whose yarns, it says, are spun elsewhere. The two share a surname, both sell yarn made from Shetland wool and both belong to the islands’ textile trade, but they are different companies with different histories and owners.

In 2004, after the Smith family retired, the company “joined with Curtis Wool Direct in Yorkshire,” it says. Companies House lists Curtis Wool Direct Holdings Limited, of Bingley in West Yorkshire, as holding 75% or more of its shares, a control notified in December 2018; an earlier entry names Curtis Wool Direct Limited from 2016. Jamieson & Smith describes itself as still “staffed by Shetlanders” and operating as “a standalone company,” and its website calls Curtis Wool Direct “our parent company.”

Hand sorted, graded and commission spun.

Brokering is the core of the business. Crofters bring their fleeces to the wool store in Lerwick, where, the company says, each is hand sorted and graded by its staff; it calls itself “one of the few wool brokers who still hand sort and grade every fleece.” It says it buys from more than 700 crofters and farmers across the islands, and that a Trading Standards investigation in 2009 confirmed it handled more than 80% of Shetland’s annual wool clip, a figure we give as the company reports it. The graded wool is baled and shipped to the British mainland, “approximately 250+ tonne a year,” to Curtis Wool Direct, which buys it.

The company is just as plain about where its yarn is made. It says it has produced yarn since the 1960s, that its yarns are “commission spun to our requirements,” and that “our yarns have never been made in Shetland,” adding that before the mid-1980s no yarn was commercially spun on the islands. The wool is Shetland’s; the spinning is done off the islands, by mills its website does not name.

Its ranges follow traditional weights, from 1ply cobweb lace to Aran. The 2ply Jumper Weight, the yarn for Fair Isle colourwork, is sold in skeins and on cones. Shetland Supreme is a line of undyed yarns in natural fleece shades, in lace and jumper weights; the company describes the jumper weight as “an airy, woollen spun yarn in 100% undyed Shetland wool” and warns that shades vary with each lot. Shetland Heritage, it says, was “developed in collaboration with the Shetland Museum” to recreate the feel of the handspun yarns found in early Fair Isle garments; it is worsted spun and slightly finer than modern 4ply.

Brokers, mills and distributors.

The seven brands in this group all make or sell yarn for hand knitting and crochet, and they come from five countries: Knitting for Olive from Denmark, Plymouth Yarn and Universal Yarn from the United States, Jamieson & Smith from Shetland in Scotland, Austermann and GGH from Germany, and Biscotte Yarns from Canada. Between them they show how differently a yarn brand can be built.

Some yarn brands are rooted in a single place — an island flock, a town, a regional wool tradition — and their colours and fibres grew out of what that place could supply. Others are names built around design and distribution, which develop yarns and colourways and may rely on mills elsewhere to spin them. And some are dyers, who buy undyed yarn and make their mark with colour alone, in batches small enough that no two skeins quite match.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — who founded it, who owns it now and where its yarn is spun or dyed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

The Three Sheep Logo.

Jamieson & Smith’s most important mark is a promise as much as a logo. Every product it makes, the company says, carries the Three Sheep Logo, “your assurance that it is made from 100 per cent Real Shetland Wool from sheep born and bred on the islands.” The phrase Real Shetland Wool runs through its website, which says the profits from it “come straight back into the islands” and to the crofters and farmers who supply the fleece.

The company has also shaped Shetland’s wool culture beyond its shop. It says it founded Shetland Wool Week in 2010; the event now describes itself as “a world renowned celebration” of Shetland’s native sheep, its textile industry and its farming community, and a patron’s hat pattern for the event was presented in colourways from Jamieson’s of Shetland, Jamieson and Smith, Uradale Yarns and Foula Wool. Jamieson & Smith designs hand-knitting patterns in house, drawing on traditional techniques, stocks patterns by local designers, and sells knitwear by local knitters on their behalf. Its yarns are sold in more than 100 shops worldwide, it says, with wholesale orders sent from Shetland.

For a design guide, Jamieson & Smith shows how a brand can rest on provenance rather than manufacture: it controls the link to the fleece and is open about the spinning. Compare Jamieson’s of Shetland, the Sandness mill with a similar name, and Uist Wool, a community spinning mill in the Outer Hebrides. For this guide we use moorit brown, shaela grey and undyed white with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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