1 10 61 http://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/77ef0a2e4c659709b81293eb6c767671.jpg fd76f556a76424b380a6536579e0463e Exhibition Item Title Paisley Shawl Category Textiles Description This hand-painted design for a Paisley shawl is stamped ‘Board of Trustees for Manufactures in Scotland’. Painted on oiled paper and mounted on cartridge paper it is for a shawl quarter that combines Indian-style flower and pinecone patterns arranged in a colourful, central decorative medallion. The design is thought to be one of those retained when the Board of Trustees gave a collection of 196 samples and designs to pattern designer and teacher of pattern drawing Thomas Barker Holdway in 1839. Holdway won the Trustees' Academy's prizes for shawl designs 1831-33 and was sent to study French designs in Paris in 1834. He taught at the Trustees' Academy between 1835-1839, leaving to start classes in Glasgow following the decline of the shawl industry in Edinburgh. A keen defender of the profession, Holdway gave evidence to the Select Committee on the Copyright of Designs in 1840 arguing for extended protection of one year on copyright-protected designs (Reports From Committees, vol.3. 148-160) Shawl designers worked anonymously so we don’t know whether Holdway drew this particular pattern, but we know that collections of ‘good design’ were maintained throughout the nineteenth century to be used as teaching tools in the education of new designers. The Board of Trustees for Fisheries, Manufacturers and Improvements in Scotland was established in 1727 to promote and support the development of Scotland’s industries. It established a Drawing Academy in Edinburgh in 1760. Paisley shawls were produced in both woven and printed form, and the designer was the first in a line of skilled artisans involved in their production. Painted designs were copied on to squared point-paper and this provided a set of visual instructions to the hand-loom weaver who translated the pattern into woven cloth using brilliantly-coloured yarns produced by skilled dyers. Before the introduction of chemical dyes in the 1850s, natural dyestuffs such as saffron and chrome were used to dye and print shawls. For printed shawl production, design drawings like this were given to specialist block-cutters to create a printing block for each colour of the design. Paisley, near Glasgow, was not the only centre of Indian-style shawl production in Britain but the achievements of its highly skilled weavers made the town’s name synonymous with fashionable shawls. In 1842 Queen Victoria purchased seventeen Paisley shawls, including the shawl she wore to the christening of the Prince of Wales the same year. The British displays at The Great Exhibition of 1851 showcased Scottish shawls described as ‘long India coloured and square compartment cashmeres’. The Scottish industry struggled to recreate the cashmere softness of the Indian originals yet Paisley shawls commanded high prices amongst Britain’s fashionable elite for their artistry in design, colour and weaving. Indian-style patterns were not the only style of shawl produced in Paisley, manufacturers such as W and J Drysdale, and James and David Paton also copyright-registered designs for brilliantly coloured plaids and tartans. Image copyright University of Edinburgh Item Location Centre for Research Collections, University of Edinburgh 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 Design for a Paisley Shawl, ca.1839 aristocratic patronage Board of Trustees copyright and patenting craft communities design schools designers exhibitions fashionable consumption foreign craft influence Glasgow Paisley http://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/333d079b61bcbdfcabe72b873fe2922b.jpg 840b416fb4add6b8b8c43f98e28e299b Exhibition Item Title Embroidered Footstool Category Textiles Description This walnut and inlaid footstool with Berlin wool needlework top was made by John Taylor & Sons, Edinburgh, ca. 1850. It is square, with carved scroll feet and a geometrical coloured inlaid border around the lower edge. The needlework top features a design of a fox head in semi-profile surrounded by winter foliage reminiscent of Victorian Christmas decorations, with a coloured braided cord forming a border on the upper edge. The footstool is stamped underneath with the maker’s mark. An amateur may have made the embroidered top. Footstools existed in the eighteenth century, but the great age for production and use was the nineteenth century, with a peak of newspaper advertising between the 1860s and 1880s. They came in numerous styles, but were typically small wooden objects with an upholstered top covered in fancy textiles often, as in this case, featuring embroidery. Footstools were intended to raise the feet out of draughts and damp floors in houses and churches. They were found in sitting or drawing rooms in spaces usually associated with middle class women. They served various functions in addition to acting as footrest, with contemporary images showing them used as seating for small children or pet dogs and also supporting piles of books and papers. The homemade footstool featuring elaborate and time-consuming embroidery was a display item and often gifted within families. John Taylor & Sons, sometimes styled ‘Cabinetmakers to the Queen’ were founded in Edinburgh in 1825 with premises in West Thistle Street, moving to 109 Princes Street by mid century, where they had extensive retail premises and a workshop and offices behind, and also establishing a more extensive workshop – the Rosemount Cabinetworks – to the west of the city, close to Haymarket railway station. At the Census of 1851, the founder, a wright by training, employed 90 men and four apprentices, one of them his own son who was an apprentice cabinetmaker. John Taylor & Sons designed, made and retailed footstools, possibly employing female needle workers in their premises, or more likely as outworkers, to make the elaborate textile covers, which comprised a large part of the value of the object. They might also have purchased the embroidered tops ready made, since there was significant importing of made panels for sale, mostly produced in Europe and described as ‘German Embroidery.’ This type of needlework, using popular Berlin wool, which was retailed through many premises for home use, was also undertaken by amateur embroiderers and the company catered for this market, as it announced in the Scotsman in 1855 as part of a larger advertisement for their ‘cabinet furniture manufactured in their own works’: J. T. & S. devote great attention to the Making Up of SEWED WORK into CHAIRS, OTTOMANS, CUSHIONS, FENDER and FOOTSTOOLS and they execute Designs specially to suit the WORK. Image copyright National Museums Scotland Item Location National Museums Scotland 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 Embroidered Footstool, John Taylor & Sons, ca. 1850 amateur Edinburgh embroiderers middle class needlework textiles women craftworkers http://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/e32166916d6b183515e77feef3aa4b24.jpg 606b5789b35f8764ce232c43f2f41afd Exhibition Item Title Fern Ware Box, Mauchline Category Wood Description This sycamore wood box is decorated with a pattern of ferns and other leaf shapes in green and red on a brown ground. It has been customised with the initials ‘E.L’, and it was probably made by the firm of W. & A. Smith in Mauchline, a small town in East Ayrshire that became a centre of wooden souvenir manufacture in the early nineteenth century. Fern patterns were a popular finish for small items of wood ware (collectively known as treen) from the 1870s, though similar wooden items were decorated in a range of styles and finishes, including tartan and scenic views of Scottish landmarks. Decorated wooden boxes were associated with a number of Scottish manufacturers but particularly with W. & A. Smith,which operated from 1810 to 1939. Desire for souvenirs decorated with fern motifs grew from a trend in botanical exploration that became widespread from the 1840s and reached fever pitch by the 1850s. Fern ware was the fifth most common finish for Scottish box ware in a range that included seaweed ware, tartan ware, transfer ware (mostly landscape scenes) and other motifs designed to appeal to Scotland’s tourist trade. In 1850 Smith’s published Authenticated Tartans of the Clans and Families of Scotland, in which ‘ the garb of the Highland Clans was given in all its brilliance and vibrancy’ and which showcased a technological development pioneered by W. & A. Smith. The firm mechanically reproduced intricate tartan designs on paper that could be skilfully glued to small items of wood ware, their seams concealed with black and gold paint. Smith’s was awarded a gold medal at the Great Exhibition in London in 1851 in recognition of the ingenuity of their invention. Applying fern patterns was a skilled and complex process often carried out outside the factory by small-scale producers or as a sub-contracted cottage industry. Decorators used a reverse stencil method whereby dried fern leaves were arranged and pinned in place on a surface coated with resin before being sprayed or speckled with coloured dyes and varnish. Repeating this process in layers gave fern ware its delicate, three-dimensional quality. Reputedly ferns were collected from the Isle of Arran, though experts have noted that not all of the wood ware ferns were Scottish or even British and that many came from New Zealand, Central and South America, the West Indies or Southeast Asia. Decoration was applied to wood ware items both large and small but fern designs were the only finish applied to items of domestic furniture. East Ayrshire Museums has examples of fern ware tables and piano stools, and other known examples include a table made by the Edinburgh cabinet maker John Taylor and Son, and cupboards and stools decorated in the workshop of Thomas Morton of Muirkirk (1859-1945). In 1897 an inventory taken at Castle Fraser near Aberdeen notes that Fern Ware tables were used in the boudoir, the study, and the drawing room. W. &. A Smith’s closed in 1939 when a fire at the boxworks brought an end to production, but a plaque commemorating Mauchline’s wood ware industry and workers can be found on the old factory building in Kilmarnock Road. Image copyright East Ayrshire Council Item Location The Baird Institute 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 Fern Ware Box, Mauchline, ca. 1900 amateur Ayrshire craft communities engravers exhibitions Mauchline Scottish motifs tartan tourist industry wood http://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/1b922adb3bb926696d5629675f84d9e9.jpg 062b9aa52d7fa79f096b01938b0c29da Exhibition Item Title William Trotter Chair Category Wood Description This carved mahogany hall chair with intricate rope and anchor design, was made by William Trotter for Trinity House, Edinburgh in 1816. It is one of a set of six, and is in a typical ‘hall chair’ design, with an elaborate armorial back and solid seat suitable for an entrance hall where users were likely to be seated for a short time and wearing wet outer garments. The chairs feature the Trinity House emblem, ‘PERVIA VIRTUTI SYDERA TERRA MARE’ (‘The earth, the sea and the stars are conquerable by men of courage.’) Trinity House is the home of the trade regulation body known as the Incorporation of Ship Owners and Shipmasters. The building, in Leith, built in 1816 to designs by Thomas Brown, is on the site of the former Trinity House, which dates back to the sixteenth century. The chairs were designed for the new building and Trotter was paid £15 15s in 1817 for the commission. William Trotter (1772-1833) was Scotland’s most celebrated early nineteenth century cabinetmaker. His family were long established in trade in Edinburgh and he was a significant figure in the Merchant Company, where he was Master in 1819. He served as Dean of Guild on the Edinburgh Town Council and Lord Provost. He operated through various partnerships before setting up a business in own right in 1805, with extensive showrooms at the east end of Princes Street. The Trinity House hall chair was made at the height of his success, when he was known for restrained neoclassical design. His commissions included other Edinburgh institutions, such as the Signet Library ca.1822 and domestic customers, such as local M.P. John Home Robertson for Paxton House, a country mansion in Berwickshire, as well as the numerous residents of Edinburgh’s quickly expanding New Town. Trotter’s vast output was elegant in design and used the best quality woods. The Trinity House architect, Thomas Brown (1781-1850) was Superintendent of the City Works in Edinburgh from 1819. He had a large local country house practice and through this and his connection with the council, would have known William Trotter well. It is possible that Brown designed the hall chairs, though a workshop such as Trotters would have employed many skilled craftsmen, some trained in design at the Trustees Drawing Academy. Trotter introduced London styles of furniture to Scotland, making use of pattern books such as those produced by Sheraton and Chippendale. He and other leading cabinetmakers sought to standardise prices and dimensions in the trade, publishing the Edinburgh Cabinet Makers’ Book of Prices from 1805. Trotter’s celebrated showroom was listed in tourist guides of the period as somewhere to visit when in Edinburgh. According to Thomas Dibden in his 1838 Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour it comprised ‘vistas filled with mahogany and rosewood objects of great temptation.’ Image copyright Crown Copyright reproduced courtesy of Historic Scotland Item Location Trinity House, Edinburgh 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 Hall Chair, William Trotter, 1816 architects cabinet maker chair design schools Edinburgh furniture London neoclassical tourist industry http://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/52475f8ecef6b36d89451133fd365daf.jpg 251036e7bc88a1dd0fc97f0c572d8605 Exhibition Item Title Umbrella Stand, Carron Company Category Metal Wares Description This ink on paper design shows the shape and details of the cast-iron umbrella stand copyright registered by Carron Company at 75 Upper Thames Street, London and with works at Carron Stirlingshire, Scotland, on February 24th 1843. The design, which is typical of mid-Victorian taste, is highly decorative and shows the intricate moulding capabilities of the iron-casting process comprising a symmetrical arrangement of adjoining c-scrolls and almost no straight lines. It was one of over thirty-five designs registered by Carron Company between 1843 and 1863. Carron Company was the first large-scale cast-iron smelting company in Scotland. Founded in 1759 on the banks of the River Carron it was established as a large-scale manufactory, with ammunition, architectural ironwork and decorative domestic wares all included in its early production. Emphasis on good design was a significant factor in Carron’s early success. In the 1770s the Scottish architects, Robert, James and John Adam became shareholders in the business, influencing the style of its decorative work and representing the firm’s commercial interests in London. Under their influence Carron supplied the beautiful, classical-style cast-iron ranges and decorative grates for which the company became renowned, many of these can still be found in the private and public rooms of country and town houses in London and Scotland. Carron’s Adam-styled ironwork can also still be seen in the balconies and railings of Edinburgh’s New Town. Carron Company was formed as a joint endeavour between chemical manufacturer John Roebuck, Birmingham businessman Samuel Garbett, and William Cadell who was an ironmaster, shipowner and merchant of Cockenzie. In its early years it was dependent on the skills and knowledge of a workforce brought from the iron district of Coalbrookdale in Shropshire, but its expansion allowed investment in local skills and new smelting technologies. By the late eighteenth-century Carron was fully exploiting Falkirk’s resources of iron-ore and labour. Carron promoted its goods through exhibition displays and advertising catalogues. The exhibition catalogue of the 1862 International Exhibition in London features an illustration of an ornate parlour register stove and details of Carron’s London showroom at 15 Upper Thames Street and its warehouses at 30 Red Cross Street Liverpool and 123 Buchanen Street, Glasgow. The diversity of goods manufactured can be seen in a catalogue produced by the firm in the early 1880s, which illustrates ornamental goods for domestic wares including umbrella stands, garden seats, clothes posts and kitchen ovens. Other sections of the catalogue show illustrations for the firm’s domestic and industrial sanitary fittings including stoves for shops and ships, palm-oil boilers and other export specialities. By the mid nineteenth-century a number of prominent and reputable iron-foundries were operating in the Falkirk area many established on the back of Carron’s early endeavour. The Phoenix Foundry (est.1802) and The Falkirk Iron Company (est.1819) were just two of the rival foundries founded by men previously connected to Carron Company. Image copyright The National Archives, ref. BT43/1 (5372) Item Location The National Archives, London 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 Umbrella Stand, Carron Company, 1843 cast-iron copyright and patenting craft communities Edinburgh Glasgow London neoclassical Robert Adam Stirling http://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/1c41629f6aa5789bc733e22b13a5bb5b.jpg 8b3f641470e69ae886c536059f0210c1 Exhibition Item Title Fire Irons, Thomas Hadden Category Metal Wares Description This set of burnished wrought iron fire irons in the Arts and Crafts style were probably made at the Thomas Hadden ironworks at Silvermills in Edinburgh to a design by Sir Robert Lorimer. The set consists of a small shovel, a fork, poker and fire tongs on a shaped stand with a tray for ash. A set such as this, which may have been made to match an ensemble of fire place furniture, including a fender and ‘fire dogs’, for a specific house commission, was practical for use when a fire was burning, but also decorative. Fire irons could also be made of brass and burnished steel but the implements used by servants for cleaning and setting a fire would be factory made and kept out of sight. Wrought iron's association with the traditional smith rather than the industrial smelter led to renewed interest in its production at the end of the nineteenth century. A key characteristic of the Arts and Crafts movement was that its practitioners valued simple, unpretentious workmanship using traditional materials and techniques. Small, simply-styled items of fireplace furniture, light-fittings and door hinges allowed the material expression of traditional craft skills within the domestic scale and utility of the home. 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. His work was exhibited in the Arts & Crafts Society Exhibition in London in 1910. Hadden’s ability to respond perceptively and with a strong craft sensibility to his client’s wishes informed his small-scale work. Fire irons, fenders, fire-grates and boot-scrapers were just some of the domestic items produced at his workshop. Image copyright Courtesy of RCAHMS Thomas Hadden Collection Item Location Historic Environment Scotland 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 Fire Irons, Thomas Hadden, ca. 1915 Arts and Crafts Edinburgh Fife Lorimer metal http://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/5130a958d8c8a806c7528d5793dce67c.jpg 3d3c6e6dc0f08e8dde276395b9163b16 Exhibition Item Title Brass Candle Sconce, Alex Ritchie Category Jewellery and Silverware Description This brass candle sconce with embossed Celtic design of intertwined foliage and a central motif depicting a Viking sailing galley was made by Alexander and Euphemia Ritchie of Iona. It is one of a pair, which could be either free standing or fixed to the wall. The deep tray is designed to catch the melted tallow. The design, whist Celtic in its decoration, is similar in form to vernacular candleholders made for use in Highland crofter’s houses. It is made of brass, an alloy of copper and zinc, which is an easy to manage metal that has been used throughout history. It can be cast in moulds and hammered into shape and has an attractive gold lustre that enhances candlelight. The Celtic revival was a broad cultural movement, starting in Ireland and spreading to Scotland in the second half of the nineteenth century that was driven by nationalist sentiments. It grew in conjunction with antiquarianism and archaeology and with the discovery of many ancient and finely made decorative objects, especially jewellery, which were copied and used for inspiration. It also evolved alongside the Arts and Crafts movement. In Scotland, the Edinburgh Social Union, a proto-socialist body, founded in 1885, took forward one aspect of the Celtic revival whilst in Glasgow it was associated with the School of Art, where Charles Rennie Mackintosh was a leading figure. Celtic design motifs, often adapted from the ancient stone crosses that were found in the Highland landscape, were first highlighted for wide appreciation in design manuals, notably Owen Jones’ The Grammar of Ornament, published in 1856 with numerous subsequent editions. Fashionable Edinburgh silversmiths, such as Marshall & Son, produced knife and fork sets with Celtic motifs on the handles from the 1870s. The same firm also produced authorised reproductions of famous archaeological finds. Alexander Ritchie (1856-1941) and his wife Euphemia Thomson (1862-1941) were Argyllshire born but trained at the Glasgow School of Art in the 1890s at the height of its fame as a centre for the Arts and Crafts movement. They settled in Iona in 1900, founding the business known as Iona Celtic Art. They enjoyed patronage and support from Lady Victoria Campbell, sister of the Duke of Argyll and an important figure in the Celtic Christian revival that focussed on Iona. The Ritchies used brass for a wide range of goods including trays and plates, mirror and picture frames and small boxes as well as candle sconces. Their output of Celtic inspired wares, with frequent use of the sailing galley motif, included silver goods, particularly brooches and crosses and they also worked on wood and leather. From their shop on Iona, where Alexander also acted as custodian and guide for the Abbey, they sold a large array of mostly small goods to tourists and pilgrims. These were made in their local workshop, with additional input from a number of apprentices and assistants, though they also designed for a mass market with production from factories in England. Image copyright Mull Museum Item Location Mull Museum 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 Brass Candle Sconce, Alex Ritchie, ca. 1900 apprentices aristocratic patronage Arts and Crafts Brass Celtic revival Edinburgh England factories Glasgow Highlands Iona jewellers leather silver tourist industry wood http://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/422d579e5821359d52960e2143168d70.jpg 6b0e430ebefc1534a1d63314555678fc Exhibition Item Title Silver Teapot, Robert Gray and Son Category Buildings Description This round silver Rococo styled teapot has a domed top and is set on a base with a gadrooned band. A cast plaque has been applied to the side showing two greyhounds hunting a hare and the lettering ‘Ardrossan Coursing Club MCCCCXXVll’. It was made by Glasgow silversmiths, Robert Gray and Son. The teapot’s fashionable design with additional applied and engraved detail identifies it as a sporting trophy. The top, handle and spout are decorated with a swirling foliate and floral rococo-styled pattern. The NMS owns another silver hare-coursing trophy made by the same firm in 1823, this time in the form of a circular footed basked with handle decorated with a cast band of vine leaves and grapes on the inner edge, bearing the same cast motif of two greyhounds and hare and engraved detail of the prize winner. These wares, the teapot and the basket, were presumably also made without the additional decoration for domestic customers. Silverware production was transformed ca1820 with increases in the supply of silver from the Americas and Australia, reducing costs and allowing expansion into the growing middle class market. Design influences were conservative and mostly backward referencing, with the Neoclassical and Rococo style predominating. The gadroon motif on the base and upper rim of this teapot was commonly found on the edges of furniture as well as silver ware of the period and is of neoclassical inspiration, though the piece as a whole is of a hybrid design. A base like this could be used for other items in the product range. Robert Gray (c. 1755-1829) is regarded as one of Scotland’s finest silver makers, with a firm in Glasgow’s Trongate from c. 1776 and a broad output that included flatware, candlesticks, presentation cups and plates and the ubiquitous silver tea service. At the time the teapot was made, the firm was managed by William Gray (1781-1850), son of the founder, who was his father’s apprentice from 1794-1802. Robert Gray and Son trained a generation of fine silversmiths, many emigrating overseas, including Robert Hendery of Montreal, who completed his apprenticeship in Glasgow in 1837 and was in business in Canada by 1841. The Ardrossan Coursing Club, for which this teapot was made, ran its hounds over Lord Eglinton’s lands in the vicinity of the Ayrshire town of Ardrossan. Hare coursing was a popular blood sport amongst rural elites and presentation cups or other silver items, including silver dog collars, were awarded as prizes. Andrew Brown Esq of Thornhill near Stewarton in Ayrshire, whose name as winner is engraved on the teapot along with the name of his dog ‘Loo’, was a gentleman farmer. Robert Gray and Son made many prizes and presentations pieces and also decorated silverwares made by other firms. The silverware trade involved complex relationships between firms with highly skilled provincial makers sourcing some of the components for their standard wares from big London firms. Image copyright National Museums Scotland Item Location National Museums Scotland 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 Silver Teapot, Robert Gray and Son, Glasgow, 1827 aristocratic patronage Ayrshire Glasgow London neoclassical rococo silver silversmith http://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/e65161bbcaf78d2fb500834894ef1164.jpg 6eb3ea8545ff874739852c3f19f957d3 Exhibition Item Title Glass Epergne Category Glass and Ceramics Description This cut glass epergne (table centrepiece) has 40 separate pieces. It is about a meter in height and was made by the Holyrood Flint Glass Company, Edinburgh, between 1840 and 1842, to mark the accession of Queen Victoria. An epergne was a glittering centrepiece for a dinner table and was often the largest and most valuable item of tableware on display. They were made of silver or glass or both, in multiple pieces, often embellished with coats of arms. Epergnes were sometimes made as wedding gifts or as commemorative presentation pieces to mark a special event. They were popular in the eighteenth century when they normally included bowls for candid fruits or nuts and they also typically held candles. In the nineteenth century, with changes in the way that meals were served and the introduction of oil lamps, the epergne was less likely to be used as a food container or for lighting effects and was either entirely decorative or held flower arrangements. This epergne was made for a royal table setting and was used on state occasions at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh. It was also displayed at the international exhibition displays that were mounted by the company – as in Edinburgh in 1886. The Holyrood Glass Company, with factory premises at the South Back of Canongate and a shop in central Edinburgh, was one of several celebrated glass making firms in Edinburgh. In 1868 it employed over 200 men and maintained mass production alongside higher end craft output, with a group of about 40 skilled engravers or glasscutters and apprentices. The owner of the company mid century, John Ford, who took over from an uncle, was apprentice trained as a glasscutter, making a cut glass fruit bowl as his apprenticeship piece. The company also maintained a strong relationship with a glass engraving workshop, J.H.B Millar, founded in the 1850s by a Bohemian entrepreneur with Bohemian workmen. J.H.B Millar was particularly associated with the development of the Scottish fern pattern design. This glass epergne represents a spectacular display of craftsmanship and ingenious design, with numerous cut glass elements in the eight separate bowls and on the upper section, which is topped with a glass replica of a crown and a Maltese cross. Richard Hunter, foreman glasscutter for the Holyrood Glass Company, made and probably also designed the piece, taking two years to complete it and bringing prestige and publicity for his employers in the process. The company was know for table pieces with a high craft input, including their specialist lines in cut glass lamps, some decorated with ceramic cameos and brass fixings. Other items were made for royal customers including a cut glass toilet service for Princess Beatrice in 1897, which was describe in the Edinburgh Evening News as intended for use at Balmoral but also on show at the company premises at 39 Princess Street Edinburgh for a few days prior to dispatch. But most of the company’s output and their main source of revenue were more prosaic and comprise mass produced glassware for the middle class home Image copyright Museum of Edinburgh Item Location Museum of Edinburgh 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 Glass Epergne, Holyrood Flint Glass Company, ca.1841 apprentices Bohemia Brass ceramics Edinburgh engravers exhibitions fern pattern glass middle class Queen Victoria silver tableware http://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/db2fb9b08387bcbb0cafd41aa7f2011a.jpg 371d2a279d47f515b8856f3f16ab8f88 Exhibition Item Title Glazed earthenware ornamental frog made by the Dunmore Pottery c. 1890 Category Glass and Ceramics Description This turquoise glazed earthenware flower vase, 175 mm high, is shaped as a Chinese grotesque three-legged lucky money frog, a traditional symbol of prosperity and wellbeing. The Dunmore Pottery made the ornament in a number of colours and in various sizes. An alternative version has the same frog in a seated position with its head raised and mouth open to hold flowers. The Dunmore Pottery made numerous animal-shaped vases and ornaments to suit Victorian taste. Some were of a naturalistic design, such as the much reproduced seated pig, which in more highly decorated form, was also famously made by the Wemyss factory in Fife by the firm of Robert Heron & Son. The owl was another popular subject and both the pig and the owl were produced in large numbers as moneyboxes. Oriental design was popular in the later nineteenth century as trade with the east expanded and the international exhibition movement exposed a wider audience to imports from China or Japan. The Dunmore Pottery near Airth in rural Stirlingshire was established in the late eighteenth century to take advantage of a seam of local clay that could be fashioned into domestic wares and tiles. Peter Gardener (1834-1919), who took over his father’s business in 1866, was a gifted designer and clever entrepreneur, adept at exploiting international exhibitions and aristocratic patronage to forward his reputation. The firm remained a small concern with only fifteen skilled potters at its peak in 1881. The Scotsman in 1886 highlighted Gardener’s ‘vases of artistic design, flower pots of various shapes and colours, garden seats and pedestals of lovely appearance, mantelpiece, table, and other useful and ornamental goods of excellent finish’. Dunmore pottery was sold through high-end shops throughout Britain and abroad. The company also had a specialist line in commemorative wares, mostly marking marriages or anniversaries. The Dunmore Pottery was well known for its vivid glazes, as in this example of bright turquoise. One of the best selling lines were the crackled red and turquoise glaze vases that caught the attention of Queen Victoria when first exhibited at the Edinburgh International Exhibition of 1886 and were subsequently named ‘Queen’s Vases’. Dunmore pottery was exhibited abroad as well as in Scotland, including the Philadelphia Exhibition of 1876, but it was the Glasgow Exhibition of 1888 that saw the biggest and most spectacular display, with the ‘Lady Dunmore Bowl’ garnering much praise. The Dunmore Pottery success was partly founded on tourist sales, which was instrumental in the development of several types of Scottish craft production aimed at the souvenir market. There is a tourist guide to the pottery itself. The company closed in 1919 following Peter Gardner’s death. Image copyright National Museums Scotland Item Location National Museums Scotland 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 Glazed Earthenware Frog, the Dunmore Pottery, ca. 1890 aristocratic patronage ceramics China exhibitions Fife Oriental pottery Queen Victoria Stirlingshire tourist industry