Savills Portugal

You know you’re in good company in Scotland when a friend or family member pats a small space on their couch and invites you to 'coorie in'. Squashed in next to them, you might not have an awful lot of room but that’s more than made up for by the feeling of belonging and companionship many of us have sorely missed over long months recently.

The term is becoming everyday parlance as a way to describe a scene or a room; one that’s equally inviting, providing a refuge from whatever’s going on outside.

The Art of Coorie has been around for hundreds of years, yet summing up the essence of Scottishness in a single term has always proved elusive. Now we can put both word and concept together to give us a comfortable manifesto for living.

Coorie is a word I’ve come to associate with the warmth and geniality of Glaswegians. I was born on England’s South Coast and, although I grew up in Fife, it was in Glasgow where I first heard it used, initially by my friends and then, later, in its new incarnation through my work as a lifestyle journalist.

When talking with interior designers I began to hear coorie used to describe Scottish homes with sheepskin-covered sofas and log-burning stoves where people wanted to spend time with each other. When I put this new usage to Scots textile artists and makers, they seemed excited. They spoke passionately about how they had long searched for a word that described their work; one that referenced their Scottish heritage yet implied a contemporary spin. Maybe, they told me, they could borrow the word coorie to illustrate their creativity.

It soon became clear that coorie reflected a wider lifestyle. The idea can be applied to almost every aspect of life: from buying clothes that reinvent traditional materials, to eating local food produce, to exploring the countryside’s hidden nooks.

The ideal coorie scene should reflect a balance of the outside and in, bringing to mind a day spent Munro-bagging or loch swimming, bookended by a bowl of something hot and nourishing as you dry off next to a heat source with a contented dog at your side.

Don’t forget smell either: faint lanolin clinging to woollen blankets or the gentle waft of sweet smelling blooms gathered in a display of relaxed exuberance.

You don’t have to speak with a Scottish accent or have any Scottish heritage to feel an affinity with coorie. You don’t even have to live in Scotland to be inspired by it. Letting the landscape into your home can evoke feelings of comfort and wellbeing wherever you live.