3 10 61 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/69a9d9180b39d121d8a5048ff1891135.jpg f65f5707b501bafb6c6e08927bdb1297 Exhibition Item Image copyright Tain and District Museum's Trust Item Location Tain and District Museum Category Portraits Description This photograph of Mrs and Miss Ross of Tain in north-east Scotland, taken by John Ross, an accountant in Tain and son of Mrs Ross, is titled ‘Household Industry in Tain Previous to 1850’. It shows the two women engaged in traditional female domestic crafts – spinning wool and knitting socks or stockings – which were also practiced commercially to supplement household incomes among the rural poor. Mrs Ross is dressed in the simple clothing of an elderly though well-off Highland cottager, with a frilled and starched linen ‘mutch’ or cap on her head and a practical cotton skirt and shawl. She may have dressed like this on an everyday basis, though as the mother of an accountant her middle class status would suggest otherwise. Miss Ross is fashionably dressed in a plaid silk gown over a crinoline. Despite the drapery in the background, the foliage on the ground suggests that the carefully composed photograph was taken outdoors. Nineteenth century middle class and elite women were commonly represented in paintings and photographs with spinning wheels – and ornate spinning wheels, often antiques, were purchased as household furniture for elite drawing rooms from the 1880s. Processing textiles at home like this, though it was a technology long replaced by factories and machines, expressed an ideal of feminine industriousness – called eydence in Scots – and also evoked romanticised images of cottage life in the past and in the Highlands in particular that held a particular charm for Victorians. Queen Victoria, during her widowhood at Balmoral, was photographed on a number of occasions posed by a similar spinning wheel. Tourist photographs of Highland Scotland commonly featured women seated with wheels outside cottages and they were also displayed in the popular Highland and Irish villages that featured in international exhibitions. Mrs Ross sits by a Saxony wheel, which was widely introduced to Scotland from the mid-eighteenth century as the linen industry evolved, replacing the more portable and primitive distaff system of spinning. The wheel is powered with a foot treadle. Alongside her is a jack reel for winding the yarn. There is a basket on the ground containing balls of wool and finished socks. 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 Mrs and Miss Ross of Tain, spinning and knitting ca. 1865 exhibitions linen spinning textiles tourist industry wool 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 <p>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.</p> <p>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.</p> <p>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.  </p> 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/9c4625823af717ae1a06905a1ba667c9.jpg 62ea8cc2fafe30d958da90a6d511ec05 Exhibition Item Category Wood Image copyright Scottish National Portrait Gallery Item Location Scottish National Portrait Gallery Description Matthew Hardie was a celebrated violin maker, sometimes known as the ‘Scottish Stradivari’. He was born in Jedburgh in 1754, the son of a clock maker and trained as a joiner before a spell in the army and then a shift to musical instrument making. He soon focussed his energies on violin and fiddle making, with music for this instrument much in vogue on the concert stage and among players of Scottish tunes. He also repaired old instruments, or used the wood from old instruments to fashion new ones. He was based in the Lawnmarket from 1790, shifting his business premises several times within the vicinity and later relocating to Calton Hill, which was a sort of culture quarter by the 1820s, associated with print sellers, artist suppliers and bookshops. His son and grandson followed him in the same trade with premises in nearby Shakespeare Square. Hardie made very good copies of celebrated violins such as the Alday Stradivarius, which had been played in Edinburgh in 1803 by visiting virtuoso Paul Alday, who allowed him to study the construction of the seventeenth-century Italian instrument. He used choice woods imported from Europe and sold the finished violins to elite customers in Edinburgh and in London. Instruments such as these still are used today and command high prices. But he also manufactured a more inferior output for the cheaper end of the market, which doubtless smoothed his day-to-day income flow. Hardie enjoyed the personal patronage of many Scottish aristocrats and moved in fashionable circles in Edinburgh, but he suffered a life-long problem with alcohol abuse which undermined his career and profits. This portrait of Hardie was taken near the end of his life when he was an impoverished resident in the Edinburgh Charity Workhouse. It shows a bleary-eyed and dishevelled old man in a great coat, leaning against the back of a chair. He died a few years later aged 71 and was buried in Greyfriars kirk yard. The artist is Sir William Allan, Edinburgh born and apprentice trained as coach painter before turning his hand to anatomical drawing and then history painting, where he made his reputation. He worked in London and also visited Russia, but much of his career was conducted in Edinburgh. The portrait, undertaken later in his life, was one of a series of small paintings of local figures involved in the theatre and the arts. 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 Matthew Hardie, violin maker in Edinburgh, 1822 clock maker Edinburgh joiners London patronage wood http://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/1477ce33b84747a7a1c56bd1d676ad3f.jpg eaa36f24fb878109da53a496ec9eb97d Exhibition Item Category Buildings Image copyright Aberdeen City Council Item Location Aberdeen Maritime Museum Description Traditional skills were mobilised in the service of new industries as well as old ones. This photograph shows a group of the woodworkers and metalworkers employed at the Sandliands Chemical Works near Aberdeen. The range of tools suggests that the men and their apprentices were responsible for maintenance as well as running the factory’s machines. At the centre of the photograph is a blacksmith’s anvil and the boy to the right holds an elaborate bellows. A cooper stands to the left of the photograph next to a group of stacked barrels, while other men hold hammers, specially adapted wrenches or traditional woodworking tools. Sandilands Chemical Works opened in 1848 to process the bi-products of the adjacent Aberdeen Gas Works, though by the end of the century it had diversified into the production of various organic chemicals. The works was owned and run by John Miller, one of three l brothers who were influential in Scotland’s early chemical industries. George Miller & Co ran the Rumford Street Oil Works in Glasgow, and James Miller the Forth and Clyde Oil Works also in Glasgow. All their businesses were dependent on local supplies of coal or gas and the availability of a capable workforce. In 1892 The Scotsman estimated that 1000 to 1300 men worked in the principal branches of Scotland’s chemical industries across five major works and that 220 men worked in the Clydesdale district alone. Yet, much of the workforce was itinerant or temporary with young men forced by circumstances from Ireland making up an estimated 75% of Scotland’s chemical workers and only 5% of the workforce coming from the Scottish Highlands (11th May 1892, p.11). The Sandilands works was known locally as ‘Stinky Millers’ probably due its more noxious products which included asphalt, distilled coal-tar, naptha, benzole, vitriole, manure, sulphuric acid and ammonia. Chemicals were important to the development of several Scottish industries, as components in fertiliser (ammonia water), as a solvent used in the rubber industry (naptha), or in the development of new textile dyes or processes in clothing manufacture. The bitumen, a form of semi-liquid petroleum, produced at Sandilands was used to seal the surfaces of Scotland roads and railways. The skilled artisans in this photograph probably enjoyed better working conditions than those employed as general labourers at the works. Chemicals were a new industry where twelve hour working across seven days was common practice. A witness reporting an 1862 Labour Commission enquiry noted ‘that the only men exempt from Sunday work were joiners, plumbers, coopers and engineers’ (The Scotsman, 11th May 1892). Poor ventilation, inadequate protection and dangerous conditions were common hazards for chemical workers, one man was killed and two were injured in an accident installing an elevated water tank at Sandilands in 1915. 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 Workers at the Sandilands Chemical Works, ca.1910 apprentices blacksmiths coopers engineers joiners new industries railways textiles 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/af30322f9140413cd01f89cc36e0fd00.jpg 66ef9c40a95c97e975a515f5d37c819a Exhibition Item Category Glass and Ceramics Image copyright ©Falkirk Community Trust: Ref: P14070 Item Location Callendar House, Falkirk Description Production processes in Britain’s potteries were largely divided by gender until the twentieth-century. This is a portrait of a group of female workers at the Bridgeness Pottery in Bo’Ness near Falkirk. On the board in front of the group is chalked the words 'Bridgeness Pottery Spongers', showing them to be the young women responsible for hand decorating domestic ware in the pottery’s sponging department. The Bridgeness Pottery was founded by C.W.McNay in 1888 and operated in the Bo’Ness area until 1958. Spongeware is the term used to describe pottery decorated by applying colour using a piece of natural sponge. It is widely considered to be a Scottish technique that was first used in the 1830s and then put into commercial production a decade later by Staffordshire potter William Adams. Sponging was an economic means of producing simple, two-dimensional patterns in one or two colours on inexpensive pots. The women in the photograph would have used carved pieces of natural sponge to apply repeat patterns to the unglazed pottery (biscuit-ware) before firing. Popular spongeware patterns included flowers, animals, ornamental lozenges and borders. Female workers were nearly always employed at the finishing end of production where they decorated wares using a variety of techniques. Hand-painting and gilding demanded specialist training at an art-school, whereas applying transfer designs and sponging were techniques learned on the job. Nevertheless sponging required a coordination of hand and eye and a sense of design as described by Margaret Finlay who worked in the sponging department at the Bridgeness Pottery from 1916 to the 1927. She described the process of sponging as part of a working day that started and 6 o’clock in the morning and finished at 6 o’clock at night: “I was in the Sponging and you had a wheel… you worked it with this hand and you did your sponging with this one and you had an arm rest and you could do your colourings with the plates for the different colour stuffs you had. You had a bit of sponge in every one of these things…Every time you worked it you turned the wheel round with your fingers underneath and you turned it round and got the pattern on. If you were going to put lines round plates or anything, you had a wee brush, long to a point… and when you turned the wheel round this was going all the time and your hand was making a line round it.” (http://bonesspottery.co.uk/fim.html) Bridgeness was just one of a number of potteries operating in Bo’Ness in the nineteenth century with six different works operating out of the district between 1766 and 1958. The McNay family were also partners in the Bo’Ness Pottery (est.1784), which went into liquidation in 1898 transferring its trade in transfer-printed goods for Empire markets along with machinery and copper-plates to the Bridgeness works. Nevertheless, emphasis at the Bridgeness Pottery remained on serviceable goods in the form of functional sponge-decorated household pottery rather than luxury productions. In a dinner to mark the opening of the pottery, the founder C.W.McNay described its activities as not ‘attempting to do what the great potteries in England did, who could get large sums for making a single pot’ but instead competing ‘with the best of them in producing the more common article… broken day after day to the grief of all housewives’ (Falkirk Herald, April 21,1888). Perhaps for this reason very few examples of Bridgeness Pottery spongeware have survived. But the technique was used widely in Scottish potteries and surviving examples have been accredited to potteries in Kirkcaldy, Glasgow and Prestonpans 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 Bridgeness Pottery Spongers, ca.1910 Bo-ness ceramics decorators design design schools Falkirk pottery women craftworkers women’s industries 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 <p>This photograph shows the shop front of family jewellers A. &amp; 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.</p> <p>The firm of A. &amp; 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, <em>Mya Margaritafera</em>, 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. &amp; 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.</p> 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/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/f8e3ce966627732db6c4b46794251fc7.jpg 347475614f4ef0279978189e7791b7bf Exhibition Item Category Textiles Description Scottish royal burghs were centres of craft manufacture and trade, governed by their merchants and artisans through the town council or ‘executive’. The privileges and responsibilities of craft workers were vested in incorporated bodies, known as trades houses, that regulated craft entry through apprenticeships, set wages and prices, supported the widows and orphans of its members and also had rights to sit on the town council. The city of Dundee had nine incorporated trades – the baxters or bakers; cordiners or shoemakers; skinners or glovers; tailors; bonnetmakers; fleshers; hammermen; weavers; and dyers. The character of these crafts, with their strong sense of community, reflected a local emphasis on textile processing and clothing manufacture. By the mid eighteenth century, with new technologies of production and expanding markets, the controls that were exercised by traditional craft elites through their trade houses were waning. This is a famous print, reproduced in a number of versions, whose satirical intent is clear from the less than flattering representation of the individuals depicted. It was painted by a local artist, Henry Harwood and engraved in Edinburgh against a background of frequent accusations of town council corruption in Dundee and major disputes over control of the harbour. The men who make up the ‘executive’ are stood in the High Street in front of the Trades Hall. To the right is the Merchant’s Hotel, on the corner of Castle Street. Just below the hotel is the shop occupied by George Rough, a glover, who is depicted sixth from the right. The shop on the left, selling crockery and cutlery, had belonged until recently to Alexander Riddoch, merchant, who had dominated the council of Dundee for almost forty years. There are members of the weaving trade represented, along with a tailor, bonnetmaker, baker and shoemaker. The Deacon of the Dyers, James Cathro, son of a shoemaker, is the squat figure wearing an apron stood third from the left. Though often having a family background in the skilled trades, most of these men were long separated from the daily necessity of making a living from their craft. The Deacon of the Weaver Trade, Robert Mudie, was the son of a weaver and practiced the trade in youth, but through self-education became a schoolteacher at Dundee Academy and was later a writer and journalist. Burgh reforms in the early 1830s gave power to new economic elites and skilled artisans shifted their institutional allegiances and collective identities towards trade unions. The old trade houses, including the nine incorporated trades of Dundee, maintained their ceremonial and philanthropic roles in Scottish burgh life throughout the nineteenth century and beyond, though many of the trades they represented had all but disappeared. Image copyright Museum Services, University of Dundee 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 ‘Executive’ of Dundee, by Henry Harwood, 1821 Dundee Edinburgh shoemakers tailors Trades house weavers