4 10 61 http://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/e4e6665368524276f9e1e496a15395b7.jpg e85b5aea4c80b5eb559af55b8c1ac5fa Exhibition Item Category Textiles Image copyright © Shetland Museum and Archives Item Location Shetland Museum and Archives Description This photograph shows the eye-catching Shetland Stand from the Women’s Industries section at the Edinburgh International Exhibition of Industry, Science and Art in 1886. It represents a group of women knitters as a community of craft workers, though three of the girls were from Mainland Shetland and three from nearby Fair Isle. The standing figure is Barbara Muir, sister of Margaret Currie who ran Currie & Co a truck-free shop buying and selling Shetland knitting from premises at Freefield Docks in Lerwick. The women attended the exhibition to raise awareness of the skills of Shetland’s knitters and to sell hand-knitted goods made on the islands. The unusual shape of the stand reflects its construction from whale jawbones, prize remnants from another important Shetland industry. Shetland flags are displayed on either side of the Shetland coat of arms with its distinctive longboat motif and a horizontal banner reads ‘Zetland and Fair Isle Knitters’. The display includes a spinning wheel, a woven kishie (basket) perhaps to hold skeins of wool, and tables on each side of the stand that are draped with fine lace knitted squares. A large lace shawl is one of the many items pinned and draped above the knitter’s heads in this photograph. Fishing and crofting were key industries on Fair Isle and Mainland Shetland but knitting was also economically important to the islands’ communities of women who supplemented their family income and sometimes fed their families on the proceeds of their handiwork. Girls were taught to knit as soon as they were old enough to hold needles, creating items of clothing - shawls, vests and socks – that could be sold to visitors or brokered through merchants. Cash payments for knitting were known but knitted items were more frequently exchanged for essential goods and provisions through Shetland’s cashless truck system. This came under scrutiny in 1872 when a Parliamentary Report revealed the economic realities of Shetland knitting. At a time when four-fifths of all the island’s women were thought to be involved in the hosiery industry - whether as spinners, hand-knitters or in subsidiary tasks such as carding wool of garment finishing - claims were made that when paid in goods rather than money the true value of knitting valued at nine shillings was often as low as four shillings (Report to the Board of Agriculture for Scotland, 1914). The Shetland Stand at the Edinburgh Exhibition was organised by G.H. M. Thoms, Sheriff of Orkney and Shetland, Currie & Co and Mr Laurence of Fair Isle as an educational spectacle where visitors could see the processes of the industry – carding, spinning, dyeing and knitting - ‘practically shown’ by the deft fingers of six young women dressed in national costume. (Official Exhibition Catalogue p. 280). The Scotsman newspaper highlighted the display as one especially ‘worthy of notice and proving of great interest to visitors’. It offered an opportunity to bring makers and purchasers together, though prices had to be clearly tagged and items could not be removed by purchasers until the end of exhibition. 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 'Jaw Bone' Stand at the Edinburgh International Exhibition, 1886 aristocratic patronage Edinburgh exhibitions Glasgow home industries knitters shawls Shetland women’s industries http://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/05256bf4a27a7e08826cffcdaef21f56.jpg fc545bd80b7d531344c19733bc14bc65 Exhibition Item Category Wood Image copyright Orkney Islands Council Item Location Orkney Museum Description This is a photograph of Robert Foubister, a crofter, and his daughter making a straw backed Orkney Chair. They are pictured preparing oat straw into coils that are then stitched into the wooden frame. Foubister appears frequently in the D. M. Kirkness Orkney Chair order book for the 1890s alongside other chair backers including John Coupland of Kirkwall. A typical entry for 1891 was for two chairs, one mid sized and one small, both backed by Foubister, who was paid 5s and 3s6d respectively, as ordered by Miss Spead ‘while on a visit at Berstane House’, with the chairs and bills sent to Wm H. Longbottom, Cavendish Road, East the Park, Nottingham, who Miss Spead was about to marry. Miss Maud Balfour of Berstane House was one of the first to place an order with Kirkness. Foubister is a common name in Orkney. A fellow craftsman ca.1860 was Thomas Foubister, a taxidermist in Kirkwall, but most of that name were crofters and fishermen. Few trees grow on Orkney and the chair evolved for local home industry using drift wood and locally-grown straw. By the time this photograph was taken, the commercially made Orkney chair was made using imported wood, mostly shipped from Aberdeen. This portrait is the subject of a commercial postcard, which was published in the Kent’s Series and aimed at the tourist market. It is unusual for this genre of images that we know the names of the sitters, who are photographed in an artist’s studio, probably in Kirkwall, and not their usual place of work on a croft about six miles away. The photographer was Tom Kent, locally born in 1863 but trained in America. He contributed to magazines such as Country Life and sold postcard images of Orkney views and traditional life. 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 Robert Foubister and his daughter Lizzie, Orkney ca. 1920 chair Kirkness Kirkwall Orkney photographers postcard straw tourist industry 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/4c71f0210b5d2f85d8277e68f7eb89c9.jpg c70229954c198cec4c9f4658006d9da1 Exhibition Item Category Wood Image copyright Newsquest (Herald and Times) Item Location The Herald Newspaper Archive Description This photograph of a perilously overloaded basket hawker’s cart, was taken in Argyll. The items displayed include wicker chairs for adults and children; baskets, brooms and laundry baskets; wicker tables, framed mirrors and umbrella stands; doormats and cane carpet beaters. Traveller communities in the Scottish borders and highlands were frequently associated with simple crafts such as horn spoon making or basket and brush making and mending. Cane and wickerwork furniture was particularly popular at the turn of the twentieth century. The source of these wares is unknown but may have included several institutions for the blind in Scotland that produced cane and basket work from the 1860s. There is a rich tradition of local basket making in Scotland, using the materials available naturally or through agriculture ranging from straw, grasses or willow. On Shetland, the ‘kishie’ is a basket used in general agricultural work, especially carrying peats and muck. The Orkney ‘cubbie’, which was a general purpose basket of various sizes, was made by the same craftsmen who made the backs for Orkney chairs, using a variety of materials including straw, heather or rope. They were sold by D. M. Kirkness of Kirkwall along with his high fashion Orkney chairs. On Skye a wickerwork basket or 'crealagh’ was made from woven willow and was used to carry wool. Fishing communities were particularly noted for their basket work, from creels for carrying to lobster pots for catching. In the late nineteenth century there were several attempts by local patrons or Home Industry Associations to generate commercial production of woven straw and wicker goods in the highland counties. Reliance on imported materials diminished competitiveness and impeded growth in this sector. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Basket Hawkers, Argyll, ca. 1900 baskets borders furniture Highlands Kirkness Kirkwall Orkney pottery Shetland Skye smiths straw 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/c21567c3750a55628242ab44ed3793b2.jpg d8948901640f25041f3a8b45afc23af4 Exhibition Item Category Buildings Image copyright Courtesy of Dumfries Museum © Dumfries & Galloway Council Item Location Sanquhar Tolbooth Museum Description This pavement tile was made at James Brodie’s brick and tile works in Sanquhar, Dumfriesshire. It has a geometric surface pattern comprising two wheels of raised clay with indents designed to channel water away from the centre of the tile. A ‘blue’ version coloured with the iron oxide found in local carboniferous coal measures has also survived in Dumfriesshire Museum’s collections. Paving tiles were a niche area of production of the Scottish brick-making industry which, according to Bremner’s, The Industries of Scotland, employed in excess of 4000 people across 122 manufactories in the late 1860s. Sanquhar’s potteries developed from its coal-mining industry, which was founded in 1792 when the Duke of Queensbury began to exploit the coalfields on his estate. The red marls and clays that lay on the upper part of the shallow coal measures to the north of Sanquhar provided a ready source of natural materials for brickmaking, and the character of Sanquhar’s clay made it particularly suitable for making the hardest and most durable type of brick. Trends in agriculture from mid-century set a demand for specialist drainage bricks that became a key area of the industry, including at Sanquhar where Brodie’s brick and tile manufactory had opened in 1852 under the management of George Cleunel. Bricks and tiles were made by forming clay into wooden moulds shaped to include indentations (‘frogs’) to economise on clay, or by impressing patterns into the surface of pre-moulded bricks. Pressed bricks had increased density that made them heavier and more enduring. When pressed with a raised pattern they provided a decorative and functional surface. Various steam-driven machinery was introduced to streamline the brickmaking process from the 1810s but even large manufactories were dependent on men to oversee the pressing technologies. In 1901 there were 90 men listed in Sanquhar as specialist brickmakers (‘Dumfriesshire’ Cambridge County Geography, 1912). James Brodie became tenant of the works in 1889 and extended its capabilities to include five Newcastle (barrel-shaped) kilns and a Staffordshire Oven, both particularly suitable for firing outdoor bricks and tiles. The functional nature of Brodie’s tiles made them products suited to the landscape of industrial Scotland. An entry in the 1903 Glasgow Post Office Directory describes the business as ‘Brodie, Jas. Ltd, Sanquhar, supplier off red terra-cotta and blue metallic bricks and tiles’, and notes that Brodie sold his goods through an agent, ‘John Ferguson, at 150 Sinclair Drive, Langside, Glasgow’. Terracotta was much used in architectural works from the mid-nineteenth century. Another Scottish firm, Messrs Alexander Wilson & Son of Dunfermline, supplied much of the terracotta used in the construction of buildings at South Kensington in London in the 1860s. Decorative pavement tiles shed surface water quickly so were a practical choice for external areas such as stables and canal paths where surface grip was essential. Paving tiles with simple raised grids and diamonds have also been attributed to the Sanquhar works whilst it was under the management of Brodie. 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 Pavement tile made at the Sanquhar tile works, ca. 1890 agriculture ceramics Glasgow Sanquhar terracotta tools http://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/af71570a5a0d485e7455c5cfc4c4b730.jpg 2d68a40bb46b2c2157bb52621507df48 Exhibition Item Category Glass and Ceramics Image copyright Kirkcaldy Galleries Item Location Kirkcaldy Museum and Art Gallery Description This ceramic cat has glass eyes and is decorated all over with yellow glaze and a pattern of blue hearts and roundels. It was made as part of the Wemyss Ware range at Robert Heron & Son, Kirkcaldy, though its characterful stance and distinctive decoration shares characteristics with ceramic cats made by Emile Galle of Paris in the 1870s. Wemyss Ware was particular to Heron’s Fife Pottery where it was introduced as a hand-decorated range in around 1882. Robert Heron was the last of three generations of the Methven family to run Kirkcaldy’s potteries. David Methven bought the works and clay rights to the Links Pottery in Kirkcaldy in 1776 and his son John bought the nearby Fife Pottery in 1827. It was this pottery that Robert Heron inherited from his mother Mary Methven Heron in 1887. Under his influence and with the painting skills of decorators brought specially from Bohemia, a clearly identifiable, hand-painted style was created for the wares produced at the Fife Pottery. An early advertisement described Wemyss Ware as “The Original Hand-Painted Pottery in Flowers, Fruits, Cocks and Hens”. This cat is a typical example of late nineteenth century decorative design that used vibrant oriental-style colours. Wemyss Ware was named for the Wemyss family at the local Wemyss Castle, and its early shapes were informed by the ceramic antiquities held in the family’s collection. Two Fife Pottery vases, the ‘Lady Eva’ and the ‘Grosvenor’, were named after family members. Aristocratic patronage remained significant in helping Wemyss Ware to become a staple of Edwardian country house furnishing, and goods were displayed by arrangement at local fund-raising bazaars or in a special room at the pottery itself to coincide with visits from dignitaries and Wemyss family relations. Wemyss Ware was also sold in London through the pottery warehouse, T Goode & Co of South Audley Street, who had selling rights in England. A cat very similar to this one has been found impressed with ‘Wemyss Ware, R.H & S’ and stamped with ‘T Goode & Co’s insignia. Ceramic animals, sometimes more commonly associated with the Staffordshire potteries, were a favourite form of parlour ornament in the late nineteenth century with pairs of Wally Dugs, as they were known in Scotland, or ceramic cats being a familiar sight on a middle-class mantlepiece. Each figurine was hand-painted giving individual characteristics to faces and features. The ubiquity of pairs of dogs made them something of a Victorian cliché though cats made at reputable potteries remain highly collectable. Plain and floral Wemyss Ware cats are still made at the Griselda Hill Pottery. Scotland’s rich resources of natural red clay made it home to numerous potteries but production of decorative china like Wemyss Ware was dependent on the availability of fine, white clays that could only be sourced from Cornwall, Devon and Dorset. In an exchange of essential resources, cargoes of china and ball clay from England’s south-western counties were exchanged for Scottish coal that was shipped to England for use in its own manufacturing industries. 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 Wemyss Ware Cat, ca. 1890 aristocratic patronage bazaars collectors design Fife hand-painting pottery Staffordshire http://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/7a6392de91e13df9aa5a285a13831f3d.jpg 0d4374f27c26c2212b58bcb60ed46928 Exhibition Item Category Glass and Ceramics Image copyright National Museums Scotland Item Location Cumnock Description Redware salt container topped with a hen and chicks in a nest, made by the Cumnock Pottery in East Ayrshire and dated 1871. This russet brown, black and cream glazed kitchen ceramic is of an ovoid or egg-shaped form with applied feathered decoration on the sides and a moulded brown-speckled hen and four chicks sat in a straw nest on the top. There is a round hand-sized aperture towards one side embellished with chick motifs, below which is a white plaque decorated with the words ‘from Cumnock Pottery 1871’ rendered in a simple free-style hand. Redware, also known as terracotta, is a type of hard, red stoneware, though the term is also used to describe any common clay pottery that is red in colour. Salt containers such as this, for standing alongside a cooking stove, have a covered top to keep the salt dry and free from kitchen debris. They are variously known as salt crocks, vases or pigs, the latter an old Scots word for a jar or pot made of earthenware. The nesting hen was a popular whimsical motif in eighteenth and nineteenth century pottery design, seen frequently in early Staffordshire-made egg baskets or tureens and adopted in Scotland from the mid-nineteenth century. The Cumnock Pottery made many styles of salt containers, usually embellished with ‘couthy’ sayings, but they are mostly plain in form. The decorative hen feature seen here suggests a more expensive object than the usual output. The Cumnock Pottery was founded in 1792 on the Dumfries House estate of Lord Bute by the inspector of mines there, the Leadhill-born engineer James Taylor, who also made celebrated contributions to the development of stream engineering. The first potters were brought in from Glasgow but it was many years before the enterprise, which never employed more than a dozen craftsmen, was deemed economically viable and much of the early output comprised basic tiles or simple pots. The fortunes of the business were transformed in the 1850s when the coming of the railway widened the market and acted as a spur to leisure travel. The new owner, James McGavin Nicol, with family links into the grocery trade, expanded the output into more decorative domestic wares, colourful flowerpots, holiday souvenirs and commemorative wares to mark family occasions such as marriages and birthdays. Cumnock ware also featured regularly in late nineteenth century Church bazaars and charity sales, alongside the more refined and expensive, Dunmore and Wemyss ware. The striking feature of Cumnock ware is the decoration with mottoes, whose wit and rustic frankness in broad Scots, which were often quotes from the poetry of Burns, appealed to sophisticated urban customers who saw in these homely inscriptions an echo of earlier times. But motto ware was not unique to Scotland and was made in several English potteries at much the same time. The Watcombe Terracotta Clay Company of Torquay, founded in 1869, was particularly noteworthy and like the Cumnock pottery focussed on souvenirs manufacture for sale to holiday makers. In an area best known for coal mining, textiles or fancy box making, contemporary accounts make light of Cumnock ceramic production, partly because the workforce was small and the output naïve in character. A History of Old Cumnock of 1899, by the Rev. John Warrick, gives it only a brief and passing mention. ‘Our local pottery maintains its reputation through the special brown ware, which it sends out under the name of Cumnock pottery, and also through its glazed flowerpots.’ (p. 356-7). The Cumnock pottery was at its height in the late nineteenth century and pre-war years, but closed in 1920 as fashions changed and the local clay was exhausted. But as with so many areas of distinctive Scottish craft production, as the industry came to an end the appeal to collectors began to grow – delighting the ‘connoisseur in Scottish domestic utensils’ and evoking a ‘glad smile from the Scot in exile.’ (Aberdeen Press and Journal, 20 July, 1925) One of the best collections is housed in the Baird Institute in Cumnock where the oldest pot is inscribed ‘William McCroan, Weaver at Chapel, 1801.’ 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 Saut [Salt] Bucket, ‘From Cumnock Pottery, 1871’ Ayrshire bazaars Burns Bute collectors pottery Staffordshire terracotta tourist industry http://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/71ebd061fa0871e6b0c5e398dcea5e11.jpg d3d89f2e77b1b4e0cd7a9113047c4c90 Exhibition Item Category Jewellery and Silverware Image copyright National Museums Scotland Item Location National Museums Scotland Description This silver brooch set with a mosaic of native stones – jasper, bloodstone and agates or ‘pebbles’ – in the shape of a dirk, was probably made by Edinburgh jeweller Peter Westren. While small, the piece is highly crafted. A complex woven-style arrangement of native stones of the type found in Montrose make up the handle. The removable sheath is made from agate sourced from Burn Anne, and has been polished to curve around the small blade inside. Areas of engraved silver around the top and tip of the sheath mask the seams and joints of the stone and create light and sparkle, drawing the eye from the tip of the dirk through the white translucent areas of agate on the centre of the sheath, right through the handle and up to the crystal sparkling on top. The firm of Peter Westren specialised in making distinctively Scottish jewellery from native stones at his premises on 19 West Register Street. The brooch was designed for women as a miniature version of the dirk worn by men as part of Highland dress. Objects like these were popular with tourists visiting Scotland, who purchased them as souvenirs. While this piece is of a high quality there were many cheaper copies of these popular ‘novelties’ circulating on the market at this time, prompting jewellers in Scotland to patent their designs. This piece has a registry mark indicating that the design was copyright registered 1858. A year before Westren registered a brooch of native stones in the shape of bagpipes, submitting a design illustration for inclusion in the Board of Trade Design Registers in London. During the 1860s the firm moved to 11 Hanover Street and then on to 103 Princes Street, a prime location on Edinburgh’s main shopping street. In 1869 Westren placed an advertisement in The Scotsman newspaper notifying customers that he had ‘Just finished’ making a range of ‘ANTIQUE SCOTCH DESIGNS’ set with a variety of Scottish stones (July 30, 1869). The firm continued to specialise in jewellery made from native materials into the twentieth century. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Agate Dirk, probably made by Peter Westren, Edinburgh ca.1858 copyright and patenting Edinburgh engravers jewellers Montrose pebbles Scottish motifs silver tourist industry http://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/08d6b2ae308f92a46cad521d32222927.jpg 2983d7157e537f6c8fe5cd9e99f95f02 Exhibition Item Category Jewellery and Silverware Image copyright R. L. Christie Works of Art, Edinburgh Item Location Private Collection Description This is a cross brooch or pendant made from native Scottish gold, sourced in the Highlands during the gold rush of 1869, made and retailed by Glasgow jewellers D. C. Rait & Son. The cross is one of very few pieces which can be traced back to a short-lived but widely-reported gold rush in the county of Sutherland in 1869. An inscription on the back of the cross reads: ‘Scottish Gold, D. C. Rait & Sons’. The cross makes the most of the scarce native materials through its clever design. It was constructed from a number of panels of thin sheet gold soldered together to give the appearance of a solid piece. The cross shape with the ring around the intersection mimics ancient monuments on the Hebridean island of Iona – a popular motif during the Scottish-Celtic revival of the 1860s. Foliate decoration is engraved on the front: leaves grow down and across each panel around a central daisy, creating sparkle and light. Similar designs appeared in fashion magazines advising wealthy middle-class readers that the pendant should be worn suspended from a black velvet ribbon tied at the back of the neck. D. C. Rait & Sons were a respected jewellery firm who operated in Glasgow in one form or another from the 1820s until well into the twentieth century. In 1869, the firm was listed as ‘Goldsmiths to the Queen, Jewellers, Watchmakers and Silversmiths’, and operated from a fancy showroom at 34 Buchanan Street on Glasgow’s main shopping promenade. The goods inside the shop were of such high value that the owners reputedly had the walls and roof lined with iron plates. In March 1869 The Inverness Courier reported that Rait & Sons had ‘been active purchasers of Sutherland gold from the commencement of the discovery, and have assayed several specimens officially’. It noted that ‘these have ranged from 19 to 19¾ carats. Mr Robert Gilchrist, the original discoverer, seems to have been very successful of late at the Kildonan burn, and has supplied Mr Rait with a considerable quantity of gold during the last few weeks.’ This cross shows how the firm used the gold to make fashionable designs that fused ideas of Scottish history with motifs drawn from the natural world, linking the native materials back to the landscapes in which they were sourced. 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 Kildonan Gold Cross, ca.1869 aristocratic patronage Celtic revival design fashionable consumption Glasgow gold jewellers Sutherland