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The Harris Tweed Authority is an independent statutory public body created by the Harris Tweed Act 1993 replacing the Harris Tweed Association which formed in 1910. The Harris Tweed Authority is charged with the general duty of furthering the Harris Tweed industry as a means of livelihood for those who live in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. The Harris Tweed Authority is responsible for safeguarding the standard and reputation of Harris Tweed, promoting awareness of the cloth internationally and disseminating information about material falling within the definition of Harris Tweed and articles made from it. In addition, the Harris Tweed Authority is involved in instigating litigation against counterfeiting as well as the process of inspections and issuing of the Harris Tweed Orb trade mark. The authority has its seat in the town of Stornoway in the Isle of Lewis. ==The Harris Tweed Association 1910-1993== The Harris Tweed Association was the predecessor of the Harris Tweed Authority and existed from 1910 - 1993 whereupon it was replaced under the terms of the Harris Tweed Act 1993. At the turn of the 20th century the development of the Harris Tweed industry was growing. Small independent producers, often entrepreneurial general merchants, had largely supplanted the landlord proprietors in both Harris and Lewis as middlemen between weavers and textile wholesalers in the south of the UK.〔D. Bremner, The Industries of Scotland: their Rise, Progress and Present Condition, 155.〕 The role of general merchants as the middlemen in the sale of Harris Tweed was a vital factor in expanding the industry away from the patronage of the land-owning gentry and into the hands of island entrepreneurs. Those merchants who built up a business dealing in tweeds often became independent producers in their own right. They would take orders for Harris Tweed, send the yarn to their chosen weavers, take back the tweeds for finishing, either locally by hand, or later by some mainland finishing company and finally dispatch the tweed to the customer. In addition to commissioning tweeds, the general merchants also bought tweed from local weavers, using the truck system i.e. by giving credit in their store instead of cash. The merchants then sold the tweed to contacts in the south of the country. A weaver who earned his livelihood from commercial weaving, as opposed to domestic weaving, had to have a ready supply of yarn and often it was only mill-spun yarn bought in from the mainland of Scotland could give him that supply. The great danger of using machine-spun yarn from a mainland mill was that nobody could guarantee that the yarn which came back had been made from the island wool which had been sent to the mill, or even that the yarn was made from 100% pure virgin wool as was tradition. It was by no means unheard of for unscrupulous spinning mills, particularly in the north of England, to introduce a proportion of re-cycled wool or even cotton "shoddy", to make the new wool go further.〔Gwatkin, 'Notes on the Historical Development of the Harris Tweed Industry and the Part Played by the Harris Tweed Association Ltd., 11.〕 As the demand for Harris Tweed expanded in the first decade of the 20th century, there was also an influx of inexperienced weavers into the industry, frequently men who had had to abandon traditional fishing work due to industry decline. The result of these two factors saw the increase in poor quality tweed, made by inexperienced weavers from imported, mainland mill-spun yarn and this inferior tweed in turn affected the market for traditional produced Harris Tweed made by experienced weavers from hand-spun island yarn. It became clear to the local general merchants that strong legal protection of the good name of Harris Tweed by a trade mark and an established standard definition had therefore become essential to the developing industry. This led to groups of merchants in both Lewis and Harris applying to the Board of Trade for a registered trade mark. On 9 December 1909 a group of these merchants joined together to create The Harris Tweed Association Ltd. a company limited by guarantee with a registered office in London, formed with the intention of protecting the use of the name ‘Harris Tweed’ from imitations, such as the so-called ‘Harris Tweed’ of Henry Lyons or from the inferior standards of production which produced ‘Stornoway Tweed’ and also to establish a Harris Tweed certification mark. When this trade mark, the Orb, was eventually granted, the Board insisted that it should be granted to all the islands of the Outer Hebrides i.e. to Lewis, North and South Uist, Benbecula and Barra, as well as to Harris, the rationale for this decision being that the tweed was made in exactly the same way in all those islands.〔http://www.angusmacleodarchive.org.uk/view/index.php?path=%2F9.+Harris+Tweed%2F4.+Notes+on+the+Harris+Tweed+Industry.pdf〕 The Harris Tweed Association existed until 1993 when it was replaced by the Harris Tweed Authority under the terms of the Harris Tweed Act of 1993. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Harris Tweed Authority」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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