2 10 61 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/b29f1528c55ae2ae0e46a8ab140e483b.jpg e6730b7894cdda199020ab2fa1fc4537 Exhibition Item Category Buildings Image copyright Abbotsford Trust Item Location Abbotsford Description This carved pink sandstone fireplace was made by the Smiths of Darnick, a local building firm that was responsible for much of the work at Abbotsford, the house of Sir Walter Scott in Selkirkshire in the Scottish Borders. It is in a medieval ‘Gothic’ style, decorated with a variety of motifs including angels and thistles and the stone is from a nearby quarry. The inset tiles are seventeenth-century Dutch and the fire grate, acquired by Scott in ca.1823, is also thought to date from the seventeenth century. The fireplace is one of the first features that visitors to Abbotsford see as they come through the front door into the oak-panelled entrance hall, with its stained glass windows, ceiling painted with heraldic devices and displays of arms, armour and antiquities. The design for the fireplace is based on the so-called ‘Abbot’s Seat’ at nearby Melrose Abbey, which also features in an early Walter Scott poem, The Lay of the Last Minstrel. The sculptor was John Smith of the Darnick family, who also executed other decorative stone work at Abbotsford and carved a portrait statue of Scott’s favourite deerhound, Maida. His most famous work is the red sandstone statue of William Wallace at Dryburgh Abbey, undertaken for the Earl of Buchan. In addition to the Abbotsford building, the Smiths of Darnick were famous bridge designers and builders mostly on the River Tweed and its tributaries. They also constructed large numbers of country houses, parish churches and manses in the Scottish Borders, being active as a father and sons business for over fifty years from 1808 to 1861. Sir Walter Scott, Edinburgh-raised but who knew the Borders well from childhood, built his Selkirkshire house around an existing farmhouse, spending about £25,000 on the project (the equivalent of two million today) over about ten years from 1813. The house was a tourist attraction during his life time and he died there in 1832. It was a celebration of all things local from the materials used in the construction, to the use of local craftsmen for the stone and wood work and the design references to buildings and places in the Borders of Scotland. The name ‘Abbotsford’ was an invention, which evokes the idea of the nearby Melrose Abbey and also makes reference to the river Tweed, on whose banks the house is sited. Abbotsford, in the building itself, the architecture and design features and its historic collections, was a pivotal contribution to Scottish antiquarian material culture. It incorporated many pieces of antique stone and woodwork from Scotland’s iconic ancient ruins, including Melrose Abbey. The Abbey at Melrose was built as an outpost for the Cistercian-founded Rievaulx Abbey in North Yorkshire and is one of a series of great abbeys across southern Scotland in an area of rich farmland and sheep grazing either side of the Tweed. It was on the route of a pilgrim’s way, ending at Lindisfarne, falling into ruin after the reformation, though parts of the building were still used as the parish church in Walter Scott’s day. There are Roman settlement in the area, with artefacts from these sites also gathered by Scott for his museum at Abbotsford. To the east of Melrose, on the road to Dryburgh Abbey, where Scott is buried, is the promontory known as ‘Scott’s View’ from which a great panorama of the Borders landscape can be seen. Abbotsford and the Borders were important tourist destinations from the time of Walter Scott, with the nineteenth-century development of Melrose largely based on its summer visitors. Numerous craft producers evolved to supply the tourist demand for souvenirs, including the makers of wooden trinkets and small boxes, called ‘treen’, in relic wood, cut from trees that were grown on the Abbotsford estate and thus connected with the great man and the place. Similar wooded objects were made in Ayrshire from locally grown trees to commemorate connections with Robert Burns. 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 Carved sandstone fireplace at Abbotsford by the Smith Brothers of Darnick, ca. 1822 borders builders carvers design Selkirkshire stained glass stone Tweed wood http://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/ab24aaa6009e22d57960c930797a8a0c.jpg d583374705342351cb23127bd01952c5 Exhibition Item Category Metal Image copyright The Scottish Fisheries Museum Item Location The Scottish Fisheries Museum Description This photograph, taken by an unknown photographer, was probably taken near Anstruther in Fife some time in the last two decades of the nineteenth century. To the left of the image is a pile of ready-to-use staves stacked in the pend (passageway), spare metal hoops are piled against the wall to the right. Coopering demanded the ability to manipulate metal and wood to create sealed containers without the use of glue, nails or screws that could be used to store various perishable commodities. The integrity of the barrel and the preservation of its contents were entirely dependent of the skill of the cooper. The men in this image are of different ages, with the young man at centre likely still an apprentice, they can be seen posing with barrels in various stages of completion. Some are holding the specialist tools needed to shape and construct the ‘dry barrels’ needed for storing fish in airtight conditions. The cooper second from the left is holding a curved trussing adze of the type used to hammer the metal hoops on to the barrel. The production of thousands of barrels was essential to Scotland’s fishing industry, so the scene in this photograph would have been familiar in many of Scotland’s east coast fishing towns from the 1820s to the 1930s. Coopers, along with the women who gutted and packed the herrings, were the land workers who transformed the bounty of local fishing fleets into a preserved, transportable commodity. In 1808 the Scotch Board of Commissioners of Herring Fisheries was established in order to regulate and improve methods of curing. Herrings were originally packed for storage at sea, but in 1819 a new ‘Scotch cure’ improved on its Dutch predecessor by allowing the packing of herring on land, so boosting the quantity of fish landed and the on-shore coopering trade. By the time this photograph was taken Shetland’s industry alone supported 459 boats, 4,484 men and production of 104,795 barrels per year. According to Bremner’s Industries of Scotland there were almost 2000 coopers serving the fishing industry in the 1860s, but the boom years would come 40 years later. In the early years of the twentieth century herring workers, both men and women, travelled to follow the shoals from north to south and sometimes even as far as England. <div> <div> <a title=""> </a> </div> </div> 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 Coopers in a coopers' yard, Fife, ca. 1889 Anstruther apprentices Fife fishing industries metal new industries tools wood http://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/5e8a4e5d60abb7c994529b67ca32bd5f.jpg f9da39162a622b20635a54c38a407900 Exhibition Item Category Buildings Image copyright National Museums Scotland Item Location National Museum Scotland Description The banks of the river Dee in highland Aberdeenshire are dotted with castles and mansions mostly built in the nineteenth century as shooting lodges. They include Queen Victoria’s Balmoral and Mar Lodge, owned by the duke of Fife and his duchess, Princess Louise, which was destroyed by a fire in June 1895. Descriptions of the fire give an indication of the tradesmen and communities that great buildings supported. It began when a group of Aberdeen plumbers were fitting a ventilation pipe into a closet near the Duke’s rooms and carried a pot of molten lead into the house. A draught from the windows blew a spark onto wood shavings used to protect pipes from frosting and a fire took hold, spreading rapidly through the building. The plumbers were joined in their efforts to extinguish the fire by estate workers summoned by the overseer and by a team of masons who were on site, led by a builder, Mr MacDonald. The later may have been George Macdonald of Aberdeen. The house contents were saved, but not the lodge, which was rebuilt shortly after. The architect for the new Mar Lodge was A. Marshal Mackenzie of Aberdeen, who had recently completed Crathie Church at Balmoral. Born in Elgin and based in Aberdeen, Mackenzie had an established team of skilled Aberdeen craftsmen to draw on for his northeast Scotland work, who lived in bothies on-site for the duration of his building projects. The Mar Lodge construction was famed for its use of locally grown wood in the building itself and for the furniture. This photograph of thirty-five men, with their trades and professions indicated by their clothing and tools, posed in front of Mar Lodge as it was nearing completion, shows pride in craft and community. The men seated on the ground at the front are plumbers, with one of them holding an impressive U-bend pipe and another displaying the soles of his hob-nailed boots. The man seated on the far left is holding tinsmith scissors. The suited young man with a watch-chain on the right is probably a clerk and the older man on the middle left with rolled plans under his arm is the builder overseeing the works. The men dressed in white are painters or plasterers. The second to back row has the carpenters, with their saws and planes displayed. Some of those in the image are estate workers, including a ghillie wearing a deerstalker hat and tweeds at the top left. 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 Craftsmen at Mar Lodge, Braemar, ca. 1900 Aberdeen architects builders carpenters decorators furniture plasterers plumbers tinsmiths wood http://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/46cde8fd976cf493ace494c40541dcdb.jpg 133b1da829b4eb215d6c7b7ced091844 Exhibition Item Category Glass and Ceramics Image copyright City of Edinburgh Council Item Location Museum of Edinburgh Description This workshop in the Cannongate area of Edinburgh, part of a bigger enterprise known as the Holyrood Flint Glass Company, was for the finishing of high quality glasswares using skilled cutting and engraving techniques. It shows a mixture of machine technologies for powering the cutting wheels combined with apprentice-trained handwork. The workshop is lit from above and contains about forty wheels attended by as many craftsmen. The engravers, fewer in number, can be seen in the foreground to the right, with their smaller precision engraving tools powered by hand or by a foot treadle. Much of the engraving work undertaken for the firm was done elsewhere in sub-contracting workshops in nearby Abbeyhill, mainly staffed by Bohemian glass engravers famed for their skill and innovative design. The Holyrood Glass Co. also made more pedestrian wares for a mass market in their factory premises. The output of the workshop illustrated here, which was probably drawn for use in a catalogue or some other form of promotional literature, comprised a range of predominantly domestic wares which can be seen awaiting the cutting process and also stored in baskets on the floor. Various cutting wheels can also be seen on the floor. The Holyrood Glass Co. was known for its cut glass decanters and table glasses, along with fruit bowls, vases, glass oil lamps and dressing table sets. The company also produced fine glass door handles set with cameo portraits of notable figures of the day. They made to commission and for sale through their own retail premises in central Edinburgh and were frequently attendees at the great exhibitions in Scotland. A heavy glass vessel such as a large bowl could take up to 40 hours of work for the cutting stage. In 1868, at the time the works were described for the Scotsman newspaper by David Bremner as part of his ‘Industries of Scotland’ series, the company, founded at the start of the century, employed over 200 men. The owner, John Ford, who took over from an uncle, was apprentice trained as a glass cutter, making a fruit bowl as his ‘apprentice piece’. According to Bremner, ‘The wheels are fixed in a sort of turning-lathe and are driven by steam, and the variety of patterns that may be produced on them is almost unlimited. The workman rarely makes any attempt at drawing the device on the glass before cutting it. He simply divides the circumference of the article into sections by scratching with a file, and guided so far by these marks he trusts to his eye to the rest.’ The flint glass industry was heavily unionised by mid-century, with a national union with head quarters in Birmingham. The union determined wages and defined the terms for apprenticeships, setting a ratio of one apprentice to five journeymen in an endeavour to control entry to the trade in much the same way as the old trades houses. The glass-cutters had a separate trades organization of their own with union contributions ranging from 1s to 3s6d per week, which was higher than that of the ordinary glass makers. Glass makers, who were specialists in glass blowing techniques, earned from 20s to 38s a week; cutters earned from 20s to 34s per week; and the engravers were the best paid of all earning up to 40s per week. Apprentices, who served seven years, got just 4s to 5s per week and paid from 10s to £7 entry money when progressing to journeyman status, according to their specialist skill. These were good wages and employment conditions, according to Bremner, were mostly healthy. In the later nineteenth century there were damaging conflicts between the unions and the owners of the Edinburgh flint glass making companies over wages and terms. 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 Cutting and Engraving Shop, Holyrood Flint Glass Co. ca. 1860 apprentices design Edinburgh engravers exhibitions glass journeymen trades organization http://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/3057981274521fcc57d4d7fcbee74c83.jpg 95b2e0fca56040aa7bfd18aba746bf3b Exhibition Item Image copyright Tain and District Museum's Trust Item Location Tain and District Museum Description This photograph shows the Interior of Danny Thompson's cabinet makers workshop in Upper King Street, Tain in Ross-shire. It shows six men, a typical workshop size, all wearing white aprons, with the proprietor stood in the center. The figure in the background on the left appears to be a teenage apprentice. The workshop is a simple, single-story wooden building. Another view taken from outside about ten years later shows it adjoining a windowed building that acted as a showroom. The firm was founded by Danny Thompson, a local man, in the 1880s, but was sold to William Fraser, who appears on the left of the photograph, in the early twentieth century. Fraser retained the original name and D. Thompson & Co. continued in existence through several ownerships to 1994. A number of partly finished objects can be identified in the photograph, including picture and mirror frames, a carved chair back and hall-stand or mirror back. The local museum in Tain has a carved chair attributed to Danny Thompson that is very similar to the one displayed here. Upholstered cushions and textiles can be seen on the left. Danny Thompson, the master craftsman and proprietor, is stood behind a lady’s davenport writing desk, which was a complex and expensive piece of furniture made for elite customers. These items have been arranged in the image for narrative effect and to show the range of products made. It is unlikely that tasks like upholstery work were normally undertaken in such a dusty environment as is evident here. To the rear of the workshop, fixed to the roof, is a wheel with a mechanized belt-drive, for running a sawing or turning machine and there are numerous hand tools in racks on the wall. Wood is stored above in the rafters and prints and designs are pasted onto the walls and ceiling. In common with most local workshops of this type, Thompson also made coffins, though none are visible in this image and he fitted out house interiors with wood paneling and chimney pieces. One of his most notable commissions was Morangie House (now a hotel) on the outskirts of Tain, an eight-bedroom mansion designed by architect Andrew Maitland of Keith in Banffshire for the wealthy widow of a local farmer, on which he and his men worked extensively in 1902-3. The image here was the work of William Smith, a bookseller, newsagent and photographer with premises in Tain’s High Street from the early 1850s to his death in 1906. He took many photographs of local scenes and people including tradesmen in their places of work and servants connected with some of the great houses nearby such as Balnagown Castle, home of the Ross family. He also published a series of colour-tinted photographic postcards for tourists showing notable Tain buildings and street scenes. He erected a special glasshouse to the rear of his shop for his successful studio portrait business. As a thriving town in a prosperous north-east farming district Tain provided constant business for craftsmen like Danny Thompson, who made goods in the latest fashion according to demand and also furnished a steady stream of customers for William Smith. 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 Danny Thompson’s Cabinet Makers Workshop, Tain, ca. 1890 apprentices cabinet maker design furniture Highlands photographers portraits Tain textiles tools tourist industry wood 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/ef8489399d8260a1d9fe03a859d319df.jpg 3000fac149677d31f9b575ab20fa601a Exhibition Item Title Doorpiece, Queen Street, Edinburgh Category Buildings Description 64 Queen Street in Edinburgh’s New Town, built in 1790 for the Earl of Wemyss, has one of the most splendid of town house entrances in the city, with input from a range of craftsmen. The finely carved yellow sandstone at the ground floor level of the four-storey house is carved in a manner that is seen along the length of the terrace, called ‘channelled rustication.’ The stonework at basement level was roughly hewn and the upper floors are finely chiselled. The doorway is framed with fluted columns and an ornamental frieze containing rosette motifs. The iron railings and oil lamp stands are designed to match and were probably made in Falkirk at the famous Carron Iron works, where craftsmen producing fine castings worked along side the mass produced output of gutters and pipes, everyday pots and pans and military iron wares. Skilled metal workers also produced the finely detailed lace-like semi-circular wrought iron fanlight. The latter varied greatly from house to house, with the finer the detail the greater the expense and prestige. External uniformity allowed few opportunities to articulate the individuality or status of the householder. Inside was a different matter, for it was here that most of the costly decoration or materials and variations in design were deployed, from carved marble fireplaces to finely detailed plaster cornices or brass door furniture. The entrance to the house was an exception, giving opportunities for some to make a grand impression. The building of Edinburgh’s New Town, and equivalent town planning schemes elsewhere and particularly in London, sustained armies of craftsmen in the building and house decorating trades. With design expertise at a premium, the most able apprentices in areas like wrought iron working, plastering or stone and woodcarving, commonly took classes at the local design schools that flourished in Scotland. Though styles of housing changed from mid century, the technologies of house building remained largely unaltered and later architect designers, such as Robert Lorimer, similarly drew on the skills of favoured craft workers. Eighteenth and early nineteenth century town planning gave rise to uniform street facades dominated by terraced town houses conforming to an urban aesthetic where ordered neoclassical design predominated. The town house was an architectural type that called on the skills of an array of craftsmen both inside and out and many of the greatest architects of the day, such as Robert Adam, designed such houses and terraces for elite customers. The construction was commonly undertaken on a speculative basis by craftsmen drawn from a variety of skill backgrounds with capital and expertise in building project management. Image copyright RCAHMS Item Location Edinburgh New Town 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 Doorpiece, 64 Queen Street, New Town, Edinburgh, 1790 apprentices architects Brass Carron Edinburgh Falkirk granite iron neoclassical Robert Adam stone carving http://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/962e3f544feb38b098b0b3b1adb1ae91.jpg ceb53dbfa7b8049b2a1e236311a9f05c Exhibition Item Category Textiles Image copyright National Museums Scotland Item Location National Museums Scotland Description This photographic portrait, posed in the studio of photographer G. Watson of the High Street, Peebles in about 1890, shows ten women described as ‘some of the dressmakers employed by Mr Veitch’, plus a small boy. Several are teenage girls, with their uncorsetted figures and long hair, who would have been apprentices to the trade; others are young adults. The figure in the centre, with the child leaning against her knee, may have been Mrs Veitch, co-owner of the establishment. The fashionably dressed figures seated on either side are notably good looking and have an air more commonly associated with the leisured elite than with working women. This was a feature of the bespoke dressmaking trades, whose appeal to customers was based on a cultivated veneer of gentility. The everyday reality of working life for the women involved was, however, very different, with long hours and poor pay the usual experience. It was only by setting up in business on your own account that the skilled dressmaker could hope to better her fortunes. The small town of Peebles, twenty miles south of Edinburgh on the banks of the river Tweed, was a summer resort for tourists by the 1880s, famous for fishing and other country sports. The Hydropathic Hotel, built in 1878, provided accommodation for 200 visitors and there were numerous smaller hotels and guest houses in the town. There were several genteel boarding schools for girls in Peebles and the female population, dominated by middle class women, their servants and the trades that supported them, including dressmakers, exceeded that of men. By the end of the century there were as many as ten drapers, outfitters and tailoring shops located in Peebles, mostly with premises in the High Street. One of these was the notable firm of Veitch’s, whose shop on a prominent corner site, is still there today. The firm was founded in 1884 by local man Robert Veitch and his wife Helen Binnie, a milliner. It survived through four generations of Veitch-family ownership to 2008. At its height at the turn of the century it was reputed to have employed twenty-six dressmakers, some of whom may well be recorded in this portrait, in workshops and fitting studios on the two floors above the shop. First introduced in the 1840s, early photographic portraits were the preserve of the wealthy, but the development of the cheap wet collodian process and glass negatives in the 1850s reduced costs and led to an explosion in demand. Photographic studios were founded in high streets in small towns the length of the country from the 1860s. Some photographers were trained as artists, others combined their trade with additional shop-based businesses. By the 1890s, at the time this portrait was taken, twenty percent of commercial photographers were women and a modest carte-de-visite portrait cost as little as 2s 6d for a dozen copies. The reasons for taking this photograph are not recorded, nor are the names of the sitters. The history and fortunes of G. Watson, the photographer, have not been traced. 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 Dressmakers employed by Veitch of Peebles, ca.1890 apprentices dressmakers Edinburgh milliners Peebles photographers tourist industry http://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/4e8f8b24bdc553cde1101ad218215c2e.jpg 18bd83a08be4313560fca7e43b7bb959 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 Trades and Communities Exhibition Item Category Glass Description This oil painting of the town of Dumbarton in west-central Scotland, taken from the west bank of the River Leven, is dominated by the three distinctive cones of the Dumbarton Glassworks. At the time the landscape was painted the town, of ancient foundation, had a population of c.3,500 people. The glass works, founded in 1777, was owned for most of its history by the Dixon family, who were local gentry landowners. They dominated the politics of Dumbarton, with several serving as Lord Provost. The glass works was located in Dumbarton because of the proximity to coal and sources of kelp from the Highlands (an ash derived from burned seaweed), which with sand formed the key ingredients of glass making. The firm was notable for two types of product – glass bottles and ‘crown glass’, the latter its main claim to distinction, giving employment to many skilled craftsmen. At its height, c. 1800-1830, the company supplied most of the high quality glass used in Scotland, with a focus on the Edinburgh market where it maintained an agent and warehouse. Crown glass was used as window glass and having highly reflective qualities is still made today using similar craft techniques for historic building conservation projects. Crown glass was first perfected in late seventeenth-century London and remained the main form of window glass through to the mid nineteenth century. It was made using a blowpipe technique, with the glass spun rapidly until a disk has been formed that was then cut into panes for astragal windows. The workshop, with its ovens for melting the glass, was a difficult place to work. Machine rolled plate glass replaced hand-blown crown glass from ca.1840. In charting the rise and fall of a glass making community in Dumbarton, the first Statistical Account in the 1790s referred to a ‘considerable crown and bottle glass manufactory, which employs 130 hands’. The town was also notable for employment in the nearby cotton dyeing and printing fields that were then developing along the banks of the Leven. Employment in shipping was also noted. The ‘glass-house men’ were said to earn up to 25s a week, which put them on a par with other local craftsmen such as carpenters. Skilled glass workers in Dumbarton were largely attracted from other places, such as Lancashire or London, where glass making flourished. The unskilled were locally born. At its height, the glass works employed about 300 men, who, with their wives and children comprised about a third of the local population. Many of the women who lived in the town worked in the home-based muslin embroidery industry. The second Statistical Account for the late 1830s noted the end of the industry, which ceased trading in 1832 following the death, in quick succession, of two owners. Most of the workers and their families left the town to seek employment elsewhere, mainly in England. By this stage in the history of Dumbarton another industry, shipbuilding, was starting to take shape and the cotton printing industry in the Vale of Leven was also in the ascendant, both associated with a different range of skilled trades and communities, attracting workers from Glasgow and as far afield as Ireland. Although briefly revived in the 1840s, Dumbarton-made glass could no longer compete with production in Edinburgh or England and the Dumbarton Glassworks was finally discontinued in 1850 when the brick-built cones that dominated the skyline were dismantled and the premises, with its river-frontage, were given over to a ship yard. The site on which the first Dumbarton glassworks was founded on the banks of the River Leven was known as ‘the Artisan’ long after the works had gone. In 1973 a new river crossing was named the Artisan Bridge. The artist responsible for this painting was Alexander Brown, born in Dumbarton in 1792 but little known beyond his home town. Image copyright West Dunbartonshire Council Item Location Clydebank Museum and Art Gallery 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 Dumbarton Glassmaking c. 1820 building carpenters cotton Edinburgh embroiderers glass London