1 10 61 http://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/f98f9a485b4770de8c4597c43e26760b.jpg 89b4bd727607e20a3d6ed15cddff432a Exhibition Item Category Metal Wares Image copyright National Museums Scotland Item Location National Museums Scotland Description This photograph shows three smiths working on the wrought iron gates designed by architect Robert Lorimer for the Thistle Chapel in Edinburgh’s St Giles Cathedral. The men are using hand tools and bench-fixed vices to shape the gate’s iron fretwork. The smith to the right is working on its interlocking lower section while the other two are using hammers and metal files to shape curved and lattice forms. Two finished sections of the gates can be seen leaning against the workshop walls. The chapel was designed as a commission from the Trustees of The Order of the Thistle who wanted to create a meeting place for the Knights of the Order of the Thistle in a building that embodied nationalist spirit. When the commission was awarded to Lorimer in 1909 the Trustees stipulated that Scottish craftsmen should carry out as much of the work as possible. Hadden provided the metal door furniture and gates, the firm of W & A Clow carved the ornate choir stalls; Phoebe Traquair and Whytock and Reid were other Edinburgh-based contributors.. The Chapel’s granite and marble floor was the work of James Allen & Sons of Piershill, and the coloured glass the work of Aberdeen glass-stainer Douglas Strachan. On its completion in 1911 the Thistle Chapel represented the very best in Scottish craftsmanship in stonework, metal work and woodcarving. Thomas Hadden (1871-1940) was born in Hamilton, Lanarkshire, to a metal working family from Haddington, East Lothian. He trained at Howgate near Edinburgh and worked for James Milne & Sons in Edinburgh before starting in business in partnership with his brother who was a wood carver. Hadden's reputation as a skilled art metal worker led to his involvement in numerous prestigious commissions, notably the garden ornaments and railings at Skirling House in Peebleshire. Architectural commissions were a key area of his business - he made gates and railings but also more whimsical features including weather vanes, shop signs and bootscrapers. Hadden was at the helm of his workshop for over 40 years, and many of his employees remained with the firm throughout their working lives, but the 1930s and 1940s saw a period of change including a move to Murrayfield on the outskirts of the city. Robert died in 1940 but the workshop continued to execute architectural ironwork, including the Glasgow University Quincentenary gates (1952) and the J Eversden Henderson-designed memorial gates at the George Heriot School (1959). Robert Lorimer (1864-1929) is perhaps Scotland’s best known Arts and Crafts architect, though prior to the Thistle Chapel he’d worked on only one previous ecclesiastical commission. Born in Edinburgh but raised in Fife, Lorimer trained as a furniture maker as well as an architect. He is notable for his employment of local craftsmen throughout his career. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Thomas Hadden’s workshop, Edinburgh, ca. 1910 architects Arts and Crafts Edinburgh Fife granite joiners Lorimer masons smiths stained glass stone carving wood wrought-iron http://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/f11859cabdaab4be34d00ca4ab54ce0d.jpg 6c3df765f489a72728aeb811cc7a4a96 Exhibition Item Image copyright Glasgow City Council: Archives Item Location The Mitchell Library Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource 'The Clachan' at the Glasgow Exhibition, 1911 exhibitions Glasgow spinning wheel textiles tourist industry http://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/c02eaed278510ae3879bfff1e980f8ae.jpg fce271a4d64b18189135f4115cba41ac Exhibition Item Category Wood Image copyright National Records Scotland Item Location National Records Scotland Description This photograph of Mr and Mrs McInnes was taken by Alexander McCallum Webster at the Invercreran Estate in Argyll in the late 1860s. The photograph, which is captioned ‘The Carpenter and his Wife’ forms part of the ‘Our Glen’ photograph album held as part of the National Records Scotland. Alexander McCallum Webster (1838-1879) was an enthusiastic amateur photographer who captured this portrait of Mr and Mrs McInnes as part of a series of photographs documenting those who lived and worked on the estate in the late 1860s. The series includes photographs of Webster’s family and other estate workers. It shows a range of jobs and professions that say something of the labour involved in running an estate the size of Invercreran. The album includes photographs of the road mender, a shepherd, a dairy maid and two women bracken cutters, also the ‘brochar’ - thought to be the estate foxhunter. Alexander’s grandmother, Mrs Margaret McCallum, lived at the estate and she also features in the album pictured with younger members of her family. The ruler in Mr McInnes’s hand is indicative of his trade as the estate carpenter. It was not unusual for family estates to employ resident carpenters to maintain and repair the numerous structures, fixtures and fittings that made up an estate’s domestic and working buildings. Photographs of tradesmen and street-sellers were a common genre in Victorian photography, though notably, many of the ‘Our Glen’ estate workers appear elderly, even those employed to carry out manual jobs. This could be indicative of their long service on the estate though the 1860s was also a time of great mobility for young Scottish men who had new opportunities to leave the country for work in Glasgow’s factories or in other towns and cities. Young Duncan Cameron, the Herd Boy in the ‘Our Glen’ series, is later recorded as working as a clerk in a mercantile house - a sign of changing times. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource ‘The Carpenter and his Wife’, Alexander McCallum Webster, ca. 1867 carpenters Glasgow new industries photographers http://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/60885908ccc4845ba83c85e1ceda6980.jpg 9a9e889c9a23776ddddc2e674a8b6709 Exhibition Item Category Jewellery and Silverware Image copyright Perth Museum and Art Gallery Item Location Perth Museum and Art Gallery Description This photograph shows the shop front of family jewellers A. & G. Cairncross at 6 St. John Street in Perth. Customers passing the premises of this firm in the centre of Perth could view a range of luxury goods through the large window. At the centre of the display, at eye level, were rows of watches, sparkling silver medals, necklaces, pendants, pins and rings. On the shelves above and below these luxuries for wear on the body were standing clocks for displaying on the fireplace, at the centre of the Victorian home. This selection of stock is fairly typical for a late-nineteenth century jewellery firm seeking to appeal to customers seeking gifts for special occasions like weddings. Presenting goods in an ordered way, lined up behind gleaming windows under an elegant sign, sent a message that the producer was knowledgeable, careful and trustworthy. The firm of A. & G. Cairncross was established in 1869 by brothers Alexander and George, and later developed a reputation for the production of high-quality jewellery in Scottish pearls. The Scottish freshwater mussel, Mya Margaritafera, provided the pearls sourced from the river Tay that winds its way through the town of Perth, and further north in the Highlands and Hebrides. The gems were distinguishable for their bumpy and irregular shapes, and for their distinctive earthy hues; colours ranged from creams through to yellows and browns, silvery light-greys through to dusky pinks and lilacs. These unusual shapes and colours were understood as a sign of wild origins. The Scottish pearl became increasingly valued as the natural product of a living landscape and as an antidote to the mass-produced goods that proliferated during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century. A. & G. Cairncross thrived during the first decade of the twentieth century, and moved to a larger showroom at number 18 St. John Street around 1913, where the firm (though no longer in family hands) still operates. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource A & G. Cairncross Jewellers, ca. 1900 clock maker gold jewellers pearls Perth silver http://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/71ebd061fa0871e6b0c5e398dcea5e11.jpg d3d89f2e77b1b4e0cd7a9113047c4c90 Exhibition Item Category Jewellery and Silverware Image copyright National Museums Scotland Item Location National Museums Scotland Description This silver brooch set with a mosaic of native stones – jasper, bloodstone and agates or ‘pebbles’ – in the shape of a dirk, was probably made by Edinburgh jeweller Peter Westren. While small, the piece is highly crafted. A complex woven-style arrangement of native stones of the type found in Montrose make up the handle. The removable sheath is made from agate sourced from Burn Anne, and has been polished to curve around the small blade inside. Areas of engraved silver around the top and tip of the sheath mask the seams and joints of the stone and create light and sparkle, drawing the eye from the tip of the dirk through the white translucent areas of agate on the centre of the sheath, right through the handle and up to the crystal sparkling on top. The firm of Peter Westren specialised in making distinctively Scottish jewellery from native stones at his premises on 19 West Register Street. The brooch was designed for women as a miniature version of the dirk worn by men as part of Highland dress. Objects like these were popular with tourists visiting Scotland, who purchased them as souvenirs. While this piece is of a high quality there were many cheaper copies of these popular ‘novelties’ circulating on the market at this time, prompting jewellers in Scotland to patent their designs. This piece has a registry mark indicating that the design was copyright registered 1858. A year before Westren registered a brooch of native stones in the shape of bagpipes, submitting a design illustration for inclusion in the Board of Trade Design Registers in London. During the 1860s the firm moved to 11 Hanover Street and then on to 103 Princes Street, a prime location on Edinburgh’s main shopping street. In 1869 Westren placed an advertisement in The Scotsman newspaper notifying customers that he had ‘Just finished’ making a range of ‘ANTIQUE SCOTCH DESIGNS’ set with a variety of Scottish stones (July 30, 1869). The firm continued to specialise in jewellery made from native materials into the twentieth century. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Agate Dirk, probably made by Peter Westren, Edinburgh ca.1858 copyright and patenting Edinburgh engravers jewellers Montrose pebbles Scottish motifs silver tourist industry http://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/e0976010d7379a0a792aed43645f6f10.jpg 3231c3097fd7a30fab43ede69f873b69 Exhibition Item Category Metal Wares Image copyright National Museums Scotland Item Location National Museums Scotland Description This image shows the ‘pattern shop’ and foundry at the agricultural implement making firm of Alexander Jack & Sons of Maybole in Ayrshire in the mid 1880s. It is one of a series of photograph of the different departments of the firm, which employed up to a 150 men at its height in the first decade of the twentieth century, many of them skilled craftsmen. In the foreground are some of the molding boxes, blocks and sand that are used for making metal castings, with a wide variety of patterns and models stored and displayed along the walls. Castings were made here in both iron and brass, with some of great weight, hence the iron rig and pulley system for lifting that is seen in the middle of the image. The rotund figure facing the camera is probably the foreman, who would have been a skilled blacksmith or iron founder and there are another eleven men at work in the image. Though this was a workshop on a large scale with some mechanisation, according to local report ‘old craft and new machines work hand-in-hand.’ The firm was founded by small-town craftsman, Alexander Jack, who started as a joiner and cabinet maker in a business that soon failed. But ever the entrepreneur, from 1852, with only limited capital, Jack began making small tools for other craftsmen and soon expanded into agricultural implements and vehicles making, taking advantage of the local demand from farming and the nearby railway line for transport to markets beyond Ayrshire. Jack’s business partner and successor was John Marshall, an engineer, who also became Provost of Maybole and served as President of the Society of Scottish Agricultural Engineers. The firm, which gained many prizes at exhibitions, survived to 1966. The craft communities that were supported in Scotland’s small towns were a significant feature of the nineteenth century. Maybole was a long-established market town at the heart of agricultural south-west Scotland, just a few miles south of the port of Ayr. Bartholomew’s 1887 Gazetteer of the British Isles gave a population of 6,623 and identified the main employments as boot and shoe making, leather tanning and agricultural implement making. The weaving trade, which had once been important, had much declined from its peak in the 1820s. However, textiles still flourished, with women in the town and in the countryside beyond extensively employed in the home-based Ayrshire whitework embroidery industry, making finely ‘flowered’ cottons mainly for use in baby christening gowns. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Alexander Jack & Sons, Agricultural Implement Maker, ca. 1885 Ayrshire blacksmiths Brass cabinet maker embroiderers engineers exhibitions foundry iron joiners patterns photographers shoemakers textiles weavers http://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/2220c84ab8ba6356313e887e1c461cbe.jpg 8834414376b068c4128f1c0ab7e4796d Exhibition Item Category Glass and Ceramics Image copyright © By courtesy of Felix Rosentiel's Widow & Son Ltd, London on behalf of the Estate of Sir John Lavery Item Location Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum Description In this portrait by Sir John Lavery, titled ‘Woman Painting a Pot’, we see Alice Groom, ceramics artist, sat in the demonstration stand of Doulton & Co. at the Glasgow International Exhibition of 1888. She is working at a bench, painting or incising a large jardiniere, with pots in various states of completion displayed in the background and wearing a tightly-corseted blue-grey ‘New Woman’ styled dress with gold bangles and rings. Though the craft she is demonstrating was typical of her everyday employment the fashionable clothing and jewellery was not. According to a Scotsman newspaper report, the Doulton & Co. exhibition stand at the Glasgow Exhibition was notable for the large numbers of craftsmen and women that were there to demonstrate the different elements of decorative pottery making, all housed in an elaborate Indian-themed pavilion. There were up to twenty men engaged in throwing, turning and molding and several women, including Alice Groom, doing the painting and carved design work to ‘supply the artistic decoration for which Doulton ware is justly celebrated.’ Demonstration stands like this attracted great public interest. ‘The ease and grace with which these pretty artists perform the tasks assigned to them never fail to excite admiration.’ Alice Groom was twenty-four years old when this portrait was painted. In 1881, when listed in the Census, she was described as an ‘artist, painter’ born in Pimlico in London and was living at 3 Auckland Street in Lambeth in a household headed by her widowed mother, a ‘wardrobe dealer’ and two younger brothers, one of them later a tailor. Alice was almost certainly trained at the Lambeth School of Art, which had been founded in 1854 to teach applied art and design to working artisans. The School formed a close relationship with the nearby Doulton & Co. pottery works and from the 1870s had a curriculum designed to train young men and women for the pottery trade. Though there were more famous women associated with the pottery, in particular the sisters Hannah and Florence Barlow, who were also trained at the Lambeth School of Art, pots identified as the work of Alice Groom are occasionally found in antique sales today. John Lavery (1856-1941), the Belfast-born artist who painted this portrait, was also of an artisan family background and was initially apprenticed as a photographer in Glasgow before becoming an artist. Whilst still a young man he was employed by the municipal committee that organised the Glasgow 1888 exhibition as the ‘official artist’, charged with creating a record in a series of paintings and sketches of the buildings and people that caught his eye and were typical of what became a popular and profitable event. He also painted the grand opening ceremony attended by Queen Victoria. He enjoyed a long and successful career and was knighted in 1918. Alice Groom’s later life is not so well recorded. In 1891 she was no longer living in her mother’s household and had probably married and given up her employment with Doulton & Co. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Alice Groom of Doulton & Co. at the Glasgow Exhibition, 1888 design exhibitions Glasgow London pottery school of art tailors tourist industry http://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/2e78ea3f3192906c3adb5e1974535349.jpg ba7c0323317982271a7b06f68add3968 Exhibition Item Category Metal Wares Image copyright Crown Copyright HES Item Location Historic Environment Scotland Description This is a photograph of the cast-iron columns supporting the platform buildings at Aviemore Station in the Scottish Highlands. Each column is topped with a cast iron capital decorated with scrolling volutes and Corinthian-style foliage. The roof’s supporting spandrels contain wheel decorations (roundels) and inserts of typically Victorian-style scrolling stems. Cast iron was a defining material in the architecture of Britain’s railways where it was used to build the essential infrastructure of footbridges and engine sheds, but also, as here, to give an ornamental flourish to otherwise basic station structures. Victorian design borrowed from a range of historicist, oriental and floral styles so cast-iron’s strength and adaptability made it the perfect material for decorating street and public architecture. Aviemore was originally built for the Inverness and Perth Junction Railway in 1863, but was updated at the end of the century when the line was extended through Carrbridge. It is the largest station, except for Inverness, on the Highland Line. Aviemore’s engineer William Roberts worked on six buildings for the Highland Railway including the remodelling of Aviemore in 1898. His other stations include Brora, Newtonmore and Kingussie, the latter in particular shares stylistic characteristics with the platform buildings seen in this photograph. Constructed of a mixture of local stone and imported materials, the stations on the Highland Railway were built with a combination of Gothic and neoclassical style features. Neoclassical style details can be seen on these columns and capitals, but gothic-style wood and glass screens to protect passengers from inclement weather were also a feature of the platforms at Aviemore, Kingussie and Grantown. Tourism was a key incentive behind investment in the Carrbridge extension and station comforts were indicative of a station’s economic importance on the railway route to the Highlands. Scotland’s railways were built with the combined skills of artisans and engineers who worked for contractors tasked with bringing together the skilled workman needed to build each line’s various structures and buildings. A photograph of Aviemore during remodelling shows the men employed by James Robertson of Forres, including carpenters or joiners. Aviemore’s nearby locomotive shed was constructed by Inverness masons, William Alexander & Co, using steel girders and ironwork made at the Rose Street Foundry. The foundry previously made agricultural implements but prospered in the wave of late nineteenth century railway building moving into new premises in Inverness in1893. The updating of railways at the end of the century mobilised artisan skills in the building trades and also supported the subsidiary large-scale industries of stone quarrying and coal-mining. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Architectural Ironwork at Aviemore Station, ca.1898 agriculture carpenters cast-iron design engineers foundry gothic Highlands joiners metal neoclassical tourist industry http://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/33ac5082f4a34ce6e93817979275f774.jpg eaed0ae64340732355ee3e53f23eb059 Exhibition Item Category Metal Wares Image copyright National Museums Scotland Item Location National Museum Scotland Description This bronze and copper weighing instrument, made using a combination of metal casting and beating, with three ornate linked chains holding each of the removable pans, was typical of the sort of equipment kept by burgh officials to ensure fair trade within the town through the periodic testing of weights and measures in markets and shops. This balance beam, designed to measure a standard seven pounds, belonged to the Royal Burgh of Dunbar in East Lothian and was made by the small firm, J. White & Sons of Auchtermuchty. Each burgh would own a range of standard weight checking devices. Apothecaries and goldsmiths employed particularly sensitive systems of measurement reflecting the value of the goods in which they traded. This one can be held by hand and was probably used for testing weights employed by grocers or butchers for sales of butter, cheese or meat. The Burgh of Dunbar purchased several balances, weights and scales from J. White & Sons in the nineteenth century. Scotland as with much of Europe used a variety of local weights and measures before the nineteenth century, with traders relying on printed guides for converting from one measure to another when trading across regions. The role of town council officials in regulating fair trade for the benefit of local communities extended to rights of inspection of weights and measures. Fair trade within localities was not however conducive to efficient long distance trade. The Highland Society of Scotland under the guidance of Sir John Sinclair was so concerned at the implications for the economy that it commissioned a report into Scottish weights and measures in 1813 and in 1814 the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce petitioned Parliament for standardization. It was the Imperial Weights and Measures Act of 1824 that marked a key point in the eradication of local variations and thereby facilitated trade within and beyond the nation. J. White & Sons, founded in 1715 as a blacksmith and iron founder, is Scotland’s oldest surviving firm, having remained in White family ownership through eight generations. In its early years, scale making was a modest extension of the blacksmithing business, but by the early nineteenth century, with a new brass foundry and diversification into lock and gun making, precision metal work became the dominant output. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Balance Beam and Weight Pans ca. 1830 Brass bronze copper engineers Fife smiths town councils trades http://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/4c71f0210b5d2f85d8277e68f7eb89c9.jpg c70229954c198cec4c9f4658006d9da1 Exhibition Item Category Wood Image copyright Newsquest (Herald and Times) Item Location The Herald Newspaper Archive Description This photograph of a perilously overloaded basket hawker’s cart, was taken in Argyll. The items displayed include wicker chairs for adults and children; baskets, brooms and laundry baskets; wicker tables, framed mirrors and umbrella stands; doormats and cane carpet beaters. Traveller communities in the Scottish borders and highlands were frequently associated with simple crafts such as horn spoon making or basket and brush making and mending. Cane and wickerwork furniture was particularly popular at the turn of the twentieth century. The source of these wares is unknown but may have included several institutions for the blind in Scotland that produced cane and basket work from the 1860s. There is a rich tradition of local basket making in Scotland, using the materials available naturally or through agriculture ranging from straw, grasses or willow. On Shetland, the ‘kishie’ is a basket used in general agricultural work, especially carrying peats and muck. The Orkney ‘cubbie’, which was a general purpose basket of various sizes, was made by the same craftsmen who made the backs for Orkney chairs, using a variety of materials including straw, heather or rope. They were sold by D. M. Kirkness of Kirkwall along with his high fashion Orkney chairs. On Skye a wickerwork basket or 'crealagh’ was made from woven willow and was used to carry wool. Fishing communities were particularly noted for their basket work, from creels for carrying to lobster pots for catching. In the late nineteenth century there were several attempts by local patrons or Home Industry Associations to generate commercial production of woven straw and wicker goods in the highland counties. Reliance on imported materials diminished competitiveness and impeded growth in this sector. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Basket Hawkers, Argyll, ca. 1900 baskets borders furniture Highlands Kirkness Kirkwall Orkney pottery Shetland Skye smiths straw