3 10 61 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/5be759118e2f4db1444666e938b5d8d1.png 36d2ed69eb670a2d480752c62f3549f5 Exhibition Item Category Jewellery and Silverware Description This view of St Giles’ Cathedral by London engravers James Sargant Storer (1771-1853) and Henry Sargant Storer (1796-1837) was published in Views in Edinburgh and its Vicinity, (Volume 2) shortly after the parade of small shops in the foreground were demolished to widen the streets of Edinburgh’s Old Town. The shops known as Luckenbooths, or ‘locked booths’ were associated with various small-scale trades, particularly the cheaper end of Edinburgh’s jewellery trade. The booths were a fixture in and around Edinburgh’s Parliament Square from at least the seventeenth century. An aerial plan of the cathedral, found in the sketchbook of nineteenth-century antiquarian Daniel Wilson, depicts St Giles’ Close in the years 1806-18, it includes reference to ‘Luckenbooth Street’ to the north and small shops belonging to ‘Green the Watchmaker’ and ‘Gordon McKenzie Jeweller’ situated on the south side of the church from which direction this engraving is taken. Luckenbooth Street was demolished in 1802 but the Parliament Square booths remained until 1817. Excavations on the walls of St Giles in preparation for the building of Lorimer’s Thistle Chapel in 1909, revealed the remains of fireplaces and containers for smelting glass in the old Luckenbooth cellars, suggesting that some may have contained small workshops. Despite their simplicity, Edinburgh’s nineteenth-century Luckenbooths embodied something of the lively buying and selling street culture in the Old Town at a time when luxury trades were migrating to the bridges that joined old Edinburgh with the new retailing centre of Princes Street in James Craig’s New Town. The booths were immortalised in painted depictions and writings, notably in Walter Scott’s, The Heart of Midlothian, in which Scott describes: ‘a huge pile of buildings called Luckenbooths, which for some inconceivable reason, our ancestors jammed into the midst of the principal street of the town (…) the hosiers, the glovers, the hatters, the mercers, the milliners, and all who dealt in the miscellaneous wares now termed haberdasher’s goods were to be found in the narrow alley’ (Chapter 5). In jewellery too, small goods made to appeal to a passing trade are thought to have been the stock-in trade of Luckenbooth sellers. Scottish love tokens, known from the end of the nineteenth century as ‘Luckenbooth brooches’, are particularly associated with the booths’ small-scale style of retailing. Typically heart-shaped and featuring the symbolic motif of a crown or two entwined hearts, the brooches were made in silver and gold, with more expensive versions incorporating jewels and precious stones. Like the booths themselves they found resonance with a particular strand of nineteenth-century romanticism, legend associates their simple heart-shaped forms with love gifts exchanged between Mary Queen of Scots and Lord Darnley. Father and son team, James and Henry Storer, were talented engravers and publishers of specialised works on topography and architecture producing many similar works to this one. James’s other works include, Views in North Britain Illustrative of the Works of Burns (1805) and The Cathedrals of Great Britain (1814–19). The latter was produced in collaboration with his son, and was credited by the architect Augustus Pugin as including the most accurate existing views of the buildings . Image copyright RCAHMS 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 Engraving of Luckenbooths at St. Giles's Church, 1819 Edinburgh engravers fashionable consumption gold jewellers silver 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/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/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 http://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/8b104d62540518b24afe462f60f38916.jpg d4a7ba05020cf96010fb1882e13aa7a2 Exhibition Item Category Jewellery and Silverware Description At the peak of the Kildonan Gold Rush in March 1869 over 600 men travelled to the Highland districts of Suisgill and the Kildonan Burns in the hope of making their fortunes. The three men in this hazy photograph, which was probably taken by photographer, Alexander Johnston, from Wick in Caithness, are standing in front of the huts and tents that formed temporary living quarters in the landscape beneath the Sutherland estate hills at Helmsdale. This make-do, shanty town known in Gaelic as Bal an Or (Town of Gold) was home to a transient workforce of hopeful gold prospectors between January and December and 1869. The history of Sutherland gold began when a nugget of gold was found in the River Helmsdale early in the 19th century. Fifty years later, native Kildonan, Robert Nelson Gilchrist, recently returned from his successful gold-mining venture in Australia, was given permission by the duke of Sutherland to survey the river’s burns and tributaries. Gilchrist’s efforts revealed enough gold to trigger a wave of newspaper reports and a short-lived escalation of mining activity. The Kildonan waterways yielded relatively little saleable gold, yet stories of fortunes made in recent gold rushes in Australia and California fuelled the public’s imagination and their enthusiasm for stories of Scottish gold. The activities at Helmsdale were reported widely in Scotland and London most notably in an extensive article published in the Illustrated London News (May 29, 1869). Mining for gold wasn’t a skilled or artisanal activity; on the contrary characteristic of the Scottish gold rush was that it attracted both seasoned miners returned from the fields of California or Australia and hopeful adventurers armed only with a pick and a sieve or rudimentary kitchen equipment. Gold on the Sutherland land was extracted from the banks of the burn through a process of mining and then sifting in the Helmsdale waters, and much of it found its way to jewellers in Inverness and Glasgow who used it to make jewellery favoured for its novelty and its resonance of the Scottish landscape. The Inverness Courier reported that Mr Wilson, jeweller from Inverness, bought £30, 5s 8d worth of gold early in March and a further £193 worth at the end of the month. D.C Rait of Glasgow was another good customer of the Kildonan miners. Who the men in this photograph are isn’t recorded but twenty-two tents and wooden houses were in place at Bal an Or by the height of the rush, so these men could be seasoned miners or hopeful beginners. The imposition of licenses at the end of the month checked the expansion of the settlement and dissuaded those without experience or equipment from persevering with the difficulties of washing gold and combating the hostile weather. Alexander Johnston (1839-1896), son of plumber, whose mother was the daughter of a local cabinetmaker, set-up as a professional photographer in Wick in 1863, later occupying premises in Parliament Square. Johnston specialised in local harbour scenes and was equipped to take photographs in exposed landscapes. Taking a portable camera and mobile darkroom Johnston travelled for four days to capture images of the Kildonan miners. His photographs of Bal an Or were produced as both single and stereoscopic images. Image copyright Tain and District Museum Trust Item Location Tain and District 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 Gold Mining in Kildonan, Sutherland, 1869 Glasgow gold Highlands Inverness jewellers photographers 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/6ef4983c4bb5b26a8a23e73113a995f2.jpg de6f6275feb555e6e2475f677b63cb1d Exhibition Item Title Willow Tea Room, Glasgow Category Buildings Description This is a photograph of the Willow Tea Room in Glasgow, which occupied an open plan space at 217 Sauchiehall Street in one of Glasgow’s most fashionable shopping streets. It was designed for restaurateur Kate Cranston by Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928) while a partner at the architectural practice of Honeyman Keppie and Mackintosh. This photograph of the front saloon was published in the Glasgow Herald shortly after it opened in 1903. Such was Mackintosh’s international reputation that the photograph was also published in Germany’s leading art journal, Dekorative Kunst, two years later. The freestanding structure in the foreground of the photograph houses two tables with specially designed chairs, making four dining place-settings in total. The structure is topped with an elaborate wrought iron flower-stand comprising a broad glass bowl caged within a wrought iron corona. Mackintosh’s interest in unusual divisions of architectural space created open-sided eating ‘islands’ for Cranston’s clientele, providing the occupants with a sense of enclosure by offering a private space within a public one. The photograph provides a glimpse into the general lunchroom at the rear and into the whiter, brighter Salon de Luxe on the upper mezzanine floor. Decorative metalwork, painted wood and decorative gesso panels were handcrafted elements in Mackintosh’s elegant and functional tea room interiors. Wrought iron uprights and rails divide the downstairs lunchrooms from the more exclusive dining and leisure areas higher in the building. Kate Cranston had previously employed Mackintosh to design decorative details and the complete interior for her restaurant at 205-217 Ingram Street, Glasgow (c.1900). The Willow Tea Room was one of a series of notable creative collaborations between Mackintosh and his wife Margaret Macdonald (1864-1933). The couple were married in 1900 and Margaret designed decorative gesso panels for a number of Mackintosh's interiors. Mackintosh was born to Margaret and William McIntosh, a clerk in the Glasgow police force in 1868. He studied at Glasgow School of Art (GSA) under Francis (Fra) Newbery and met Herbert McNair whilst serving as an architect’s apprentice between 1885 and 1889. Mackintosh’s and McNair’s work with the sisters Margaret and Francis Macdonald defined a particular aspect of what has become known as The Glasgow Style, notable for its sinuous forms and use of Celtic imagery and symbolism. In 1900 Mackintosh and Macdonald exhibited a wall-and-furniture ensemble at the Secession Exhibition in Vienna, including decorative gesso friezes by Margaret that were later installed at Cranston’s Ingram Street restaurant. Mackintosh’s most well known architectural projects include the Glasgow School of Art (1899) and Hill House (1904) built for the publisher Walter Blackie, but he also worked on commissions in London (Derngate, c.1917) and designed furnishings for clients and exhibitions. The National Museum Scotland’s collection includes a wooden settle designed by Mackintosh with lead panels possibly designed by Margaret. It was made by the decorating firm of craftsmen, J. & W. Guthrie, Glasgow and was exhibited at the 1896 Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society exhibition in London. Mackintosh commissioned the construction of his furnishing and interiors from key Glasgow’ artisan manufacturers, and over 30 firms were involved in the creation of the Willow Tea Rooms. Image copyright Newsquest (Herald & Times) Item Location The Herald Photographic Archive 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 Interior of the Willow Tea Room, Glasgow, 1903 architects Arts and Crafts Celtic revival design schools exhibitions Glasgow London women craftworkers wrought iron http://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/907182e289ff4b98cda9b1b0b3f50859.jpg a120c84e714c69a6dae7680fcc45c648 Exhibition Item Category Jewellery and Silverware Image copyright Courtesy of E. Mairi MacArthur © Private Collection Item Location Private Collection Description This is a photograph of Euphemia Ritchie (1862-1941) of Iona Celtic Art with her dog Kim on the front step of her shop in Iona surrounded by jewellery and silverware. Ritchie sits in the doorway of the shop, located just inside the southern gate into Iona’s Nunnery grounds. Tucked up in a scarf and woollen cap, wearing a dark skirt and jacket with black leather boots, she perches on the front step as she holds up a biscuit for Kim. A small bag under her coat probably holds the proceeds from sales of the jewellery and silverware goods that surround her in the shop. On the back of the door is a glass display case containing brooches, pendants and buckles in Scottish-Celtic revivalist designs. A small shelf under the window displays objects in boxes and small pieces of silver jewellery are pinned to a lined board. A large brass metal plate hangs inside the window. Through the open door objects and glass display cases glint in the light. The shop’s prime position within the nunnery grounds, framed by ancient buildings within coastal landscapes, made her goods popular with visitors to the island. Euphemia and her husband Alexander Ritchie (1856-1941) met at the Glasgow School of Art in the mid-1890s. They married in 1898 and opened the nunnery shop in Alexander’s native Iona in 1900. Iona was popular with tourists seeking escape from urban life through an immersive experience in a small island embedded with ancient myths and legends of the sixth century Saint Columba and the origins of Christianity. The Ritchies drew on the carved stones and crosses of Iona and the West Highlands, along with the illuminated manuscripts of the early monasteries, to provide templates for their designs. They also made objects that harked back to a Viking and a Highland clan past. Silver brooches and clasps depict galleys – a symbol of the Vikings and a motif that appeared on the gravestones of several medieval Highland chiefs – traversing tumultuous waves executed in sea-blue enamels. The Ritchies combined craft work with entrepreneurial flair. They designed and made objects themselves, and trained younger islanders in metalwork, leather tooling and embroidery. As the business grew they outsourced some aspects of production to manufacturers in Birmingham and Glasgow. 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 Iona Celtic Art and Euphemia Ritchie, ca. 1900 Birmingham Celtic revival Glasgow Iona jewellers metal tourist industry