4 10 61 http://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/e8b4a0aa0a22c12878b31cba342c789b.jpg 3b46ef2c2e580c0d64168edbc3697305 Exhibition Item Category Jewellery and Silverware Image copyright Scottish National Portrait Gallery Item Location Scottish National Portrait Gallery Description This portrait of sculptor and gem engraver James Tassie shows him holding one of his famous cameos in his left hand and a magnifying glass in his right. The portrait is by David Allan, who trained with Tassie at Glasgow’s Foulis Academy. Tassie was a skilled artist who specialised in producing miniature portraits of historical figures and contemporary sitters in various mediums. As well as engraving medallions and gems, he moulded them in glass cameos like the one he is depicted holding here, which were worn as jewellery by elite customers. The making of a cameo involved many stages of skilled hand work. First, Tassie carved the portrait in wax using a series of fine tools, then made a relief mould from vitreous glass paste. That mould was then used to produce the final 3D portrait, again in vitreous glass paste. The three-dimensional portrait was then mounted on a stone or, in this case, ceramic backing before being placed into the setting, usually of precious metals. Originally from Pollockshaws, James Tassie (1735-1799) trained in Glasgow at the Foulis Academy before moving to Dublin, where he co-invented a new form of vitreous glass paste. Tassie then moved to London, an established centre of luxury consumption, where he earned a reputation as one of the foremost producers of portraits on gems and cameos. He made work for London jewellers and wealthy private collectors, most famously Catherine the Great. The portrait communicates Tassie’s status and occupation through his luxury dress and the focus on his hands and eyes. He is depicted as a respectable gentleman wearing a fashionable wig and a smart three-piece suit in a rich red colour with a white linen shirt and neck-tie. His hands are engaged, holding a magnifying glass – an important tool for making miniature portraits, and a marker of knowledge – over a finished cameo. The face depicted in the cameo is reflected in the magnifying glass, and Tassie’s eyes are momentarily drawn away from the glass and out of the frame. The portrait clearly marks Tassie as both an owner and maker of luxury goods. 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 James Tassie, Sculptor and Gem Engraver, ca. 1781 Dublin fashionable consumption Glasgow glass jewellers London http://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/d61231289e0a267d61d8429dff33e18d.jpg 97f418d8ae99bab319ce96832f3cd21a Exhibition Item Category Glass and Ceramics Image copyright Griselda Hill Pottery Ltd Item Location Kirkcaldy Museum and Art Gallery Description This modern, hand-painted plaque embodies the decorative spirit of nineteenth-century Wemyss Ware whilst depicting its most celebrated decorator Karel Nekola. The painter and ceramic decorator Griselda Hill acquired the Wemyss Ware ® trademark in 1985 when she came to live in Scotland. This commemorative plaque was commissioned specially for Kirkcaldy Museum and Art Gallery where it has held pride of place since the centenary anniversary of Nekola’s death in 2015. Karel Nekola arrived in Fife from his native Bohemia in the early 1880s to take up a post at the Fife Pottery then owned by the Heron family. Robert Heron is thought to have travelled to the Continent specially to secure the services of talented decorators because Bohemia’s craftsmen were highly regarded for their skills particularly in the fields of ceramics and glass. Large-scale floral designs were Nekola’s signature style, including the distinctive cabbage rose pattern featured on this plaque. Its central portrait is based on a family photograph of Nekola in his workshop. He is seen decorating an umbrella stand which was one of a range of large-scale ceramics that were particularly associated with Nekola’s years at the pottery. Decorative jugs, ewers and basins, and ceramic jardinières were popular forms of furnishing in middle-class Victorian and Edwardian interiors, and the Fife Pottery specialised in producing cheerful ceramics that appealed to a broad popular taste. The 1891 census list Nekola living with his wife Isabella and three children at 7 Brandon Avenue, Gallatown. He was a supporter of friendly societies and a valued member of the Gallatown community where he was involved with the Young Men’s Improvement Association and taught gymnastics at the local Boys Institute. In 1915, Nekola bequeathed £150 to the Lily Lodge Free Gardeners, a local branch of The Order of Free Gardeners which was a friendly society founded in Scotland in the seventeenth century and popular with artisans who used representations of flowers in their work - most notably Paisley’s weavers. In the tradition of handing skills from one generation to the next Nekola trained his sons Joseph and Carl who both became successful decorators. Joseph worked at the Fife Pottery under his father until his early death in 1915. He later took his skills to Bovey Tracy in Devon where he and then his apprentice, Esther Weeks, made Wemyss-style ceramics until the pottery closed in 1957. Esther Weeks is now a regular visitor to Griselda’s pottery in Ceres, Fife, where she has passed on the traditional skills and techniques of Wemyss Ware first perfected by Karel Nekola at the end of the nineteenth 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 Karel Nekola (ca.1857-1915), Griselda Hill Pottery, ca. 2009 apprentices design Fife pottery Wemyss Ware 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 http://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/bdb3114481521177d12a8ebf08eda7f9.jpg b421d487a6a66ecdb24b1dd74878cd25 Exhibition Item Category Metal Wares Image copyright Aberdeen City Council Item Location Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museum Description This photograph of stonemasons at work in the Erran Granite Works in Canal Street, Aberdeen, shows them working in an open-top shed equipped with a pulley but no other machinery. The men hold various hand tools including granite picks and bush hammers used for texturing the surfaces of stone. Almost all the masons are in shirt sleeves and wear aprons, though some have hung jackets on the long hooks leaning against the left wall in an attempt to keep them clean from the dust generated from dressing the granite slabs, seen here supported on stone pedestals. Aberdeen and its districts are geologically rich in granite and were at the centre of Scottish stone quarrying and finishing in the late nineteenth century. More than 20 granite merchants are listed in the Aberdeen Post Office directory for 1890. They supplied the stone for major building works but also for subsidiary trades such as stonecutting and polishing. The Erran Works was in Canal Street to the east end of the city where at the peak of production there were more than forty-six granite firms. Proximity to the harbour was convenient for receiving stone from quarries in Scotland and England and also for dispatching finished stonework by sea. Aberdeen expanded throughout the nineteenth century though the prosperity of the granite industry was determined by the highs and lows of the building industries in Scotland, London and America. Monuments and memorials were the key areas of business until the 1880s and from mid-century there was national demand for granite to build harbours and railway bridges. After 1880 a building boom led to the establishment of numerous small firms though these struggled to survive with the collapse of the American market in the 1890s. The absence of machinery in the Erran Works photograph suggests it may have been a relatively modest concern producing smaller stones for the American market. Scotland’s masons and sett-makers were an elite workforce trained through apprenticeships of five years or more, and in Aberdeen their vocational training was supplemented with evening classes in granite carving at Grays School of Art, established in1885. Changing fortunes in the early years of the twentieth century undermined the Aberdeen granite industry’s late nineteenth-century boom. In 1906 The Scotsman reported that 300 fewer men were engaged than the previous year and that ‘the ranks of masons in this district have been reduced by between 600 and 700. The great majority of these having gone to America’ (December 22, 1906). America had long been a customer and a training ground for Scottish masons but increases in mechanisation at home and abroad led to a scaling down of the Aberdeen granite industry and its ultimate decline. 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 Masons in Erran Granite Works, Aberdeen, ca. 1890 Aberdeen America apprentices London masons railways schools of design stone tools 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/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/5e69b9039b591409d0e062ef572dacf1.jpg a8e2401ce9e90e8dbabcc35c3259fa59 Exhibition Item Category Wood Image copyright Victoria and Albert Museum, London Item Location Orkney Museum Description This is a ‘hooded’ Orkney chair made of oak and oat-straw and sisal, with a drawer below the seat. The frame was made in David Kirkness’s workshop in Palace Street, Kirkwall and the chair back was made by crofting outworkers such as Robert and Lizzie Foubister of Tankerness, Orkney. Though of vernacular heritage, the Orkney chair was standardized by Kirkness to four advertised designs – the Hooded Chair; the Gentleman’s Chair; the Lady’s Chair and the Child’s Chair. They were made in white deal or pine which was stained either green or brown or in solid oak, which was fumed and oiled with brass and copper fixings and invisible castors. Rush seats were more expensive and the under seat drawers were also an optional and more expensive extra. The Orkney chair seen here is a refined development, using wood sourced in the mainland and shipped in from Aberdeen, of a local style of chair that was made in a variety of shapes and sizes from a diverse range of materials. These were fashioned at home, often using driftwood to compensate for the shortage of trees, with seats and backs made of straw or reeds or other naturally growing plants that are found on the low lying, salty and wind-swept islands. Several examples of these vernacular chairs, some of peculiar construction, along with recent versions, can be seen in the museum in Tankerness House in Kirkwall and in museums elsewhere on Orkney. The V&A also features the Kirkness-made Orkney chair in its recently re-designed furniture galleries. They are still made today using the same hand techniques in a range of classic and modern designs. The straw-based handcrafts that are also distinctive to the Orkneys and give the chair much of its aesthetic and feminine appeal are another area of modern production. Orkney plaited or woven straw was made by ordinary people in their homes throughout the islands to be used for many purposes, including mattresses for beds and baskets. The latter, known as ‘cubbies’, were fashioned in numerous sizes and structures, of varying degrees of strength, for use on farms and in fishing. Straw could also be made into strong ropes for tethering animals, tying boats or fences and for straw-roof thatching. There was a commercially organized fine plaited straw sector in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, using mainly female workers directed at home or in workshops in and around Kirkwall by local merchants to supply the fashion industry in London, where there was a demand for simple straw bonnets. David Munro Kirkness (1855–1936) was born in Westray and served an apprenticeship with Kirkwall joiner John P. Peace. He and his brother William set up as joiners and undertakers in 1880. His first order for straw-backed chairs came from Miss Maud Balfour of Berstane House to be delivered to Lady Sinclair, Bara House, Caithness. His order books are dominated by elite female customers and he regularly supplied his stock to the Scottish Home Industries Association for sale in Edinburgh and London and to Liberty & Co of Regent Street, London. He exhibited at the Edinburgh International Exhibition of Science, Art and Industry in 1890 which generated orders that took years to fulfill. The chairs found favour in Arts & Crafts circles. Sir Robert Lorimer and his sister purchased two for the family home, Kellie Castle, Fife, in 1893. 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 Orkney Chair, ca. 1890 Arts and Crafts Caithness chair crofting Edinburgh Fife Kirkness Kirkwall London Lorimer Orkney pine straw 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/b8c9e295c443b74236fc83e94cced2e0.jpg 5dd460c539d706e246e942e7af184338 Exhibition Item Category Jewellery and Silverware Image copyright Scottish National Portrait Gallery Item Location Scottish National Portrait Gallery Description This self-portrait of Phoebe Traquair (1852-1936) was painted in oil on a mahogany panel between 1909-11. Traquair was a key figure in the Scottish Arts and Crafts movement and is perhaps its most well-known woman. Her work included jewellery enamelling, book illuminating and binding, embroidery, and mural painting. The portrait shows Traquair at the peak of her career having completed several large commissions and at a time when she was developing her small-scale decorative work. She began enamelling in 1901 using a technique that involved painting enamels onto copper plate, and in total produced over 300 enamelled works including the gold and enamel ‘Love Cup’ pendant designed as a special commission for the architect Robert Lorimer. Born Phoebe Anna Moss in Kilternan, near Dublin, Ireland, in 1852, Traquair attended art classes at the Royal Dublin Society before moving to Scotland with her husband Dr Ramsay Traquair in 1873. She started her career preparing scientific drawings for her husband who became Keeper of Natural History at Museum of Science and Art in Edinburgh. Her early work was produced within the context of her family but after 1885 she began to take on larger works and public commissions. In 1888 she was commissioned by the Edinburgh Social Union (ESU) to produce a large-scale mural scheme for the Song School at St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral. This was followed in 1893 by an even more ambitious mural commission for the interiors of the Catholic Apostolic Church Edinburgh. Traquair’s style and imagery were influenced by Renaissance art and her love of illuminated manuscripts. She combined realistic representations of the human figure with symbolic imagery, the latter influenced by her Catholic faith but also by her travels to Italy at the end of the 1880s. The University of Edinburgh’s rare books collection includes a series of illuminations on velum that are typical of her skills and preoccupations in using jewelled colours, gold leaf and fine detail. The illuminations, which depict the medallions for the Song School commission, were bound in green calf leather at Cobden-Sanderson’s Doves Bindery in London. Traquair’s diverse practice made her contribution substantial and far-reaching. Her enamel heraldic plaques can still be seen in Lorimer’s Thistle Chapel at St Giles Cathedral, and her three-panel embroidery, The Salvation of Mankind, which took eight years to complete between 1885 and 1893 and was exhibited in St Louis in 1904, is now housed in the National Galleries Scotland. In 1920 Traquair became the first woman to be awarded Honorary Membership of Royal Society of Arts in 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 Phoebe Traquair, Self Portrait, ca. 1910 Arts and Crafts decorators Dublin Edinburgh embroiderers jewellers Lorimer http://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/3a681d4ad9a140014777783576cb71ae.jpg b97d6ba455085e8af96a2e0d87066522 Exhibition Item Category Buildings Image copyright Scottish National Portrait Gallery Item Location Scottish National Portrait Gallery Description Hugh Miller (1802-1856) was a celebrated geologist and writer who began his working life as a stonemason in the small coastal town of Cromarty in northeast Scotland. Son of a seafaring man, with uncles who were variously employed in trades ranging from shoemaker to harness-maker, cart wright to stonemason, Hugh was well educated in the local school, but had no ambition to use his education to better his status. He was apprenticed to an uncle as a stonemason in Cromarty, with work mostly comprising quarrying, building and stone cutting. After three years he commenced as a self-employed journeyman working across the Highlands on farm and house building projects during the summer months, going home to his mother’s house in Cromarty for the winter for study and writing in an age when every craft community had ‘its sprinkling of intelligent, book-consulting mechanics and tradesfolk.’ He travelled south to Edinburgh during the building boom of 1824-5, getting employment on a mansion house project at Niddry as one of a party of sixteen masons, plus apprentices and labourers. But the stone hewing was dusty and undermined his health, so he went home again to convalesce before turning his hand to gravestone carving. After nearly twenty years as a stonemason, he retrained as bank accountant in Linlithgow and then took up journalism in the 1840s as the editor of the Free Church newspaper The Witness, based in Edinburgh. During all this time he pursued his studies in geology, natural history and myths and legends of Scotland, publishing on these subjects to great acclaim. He also wrote about his life as a stonemason and on the workingmen and women he encountered. Hugh Miller posed several times for pioneering Edinburgh-based photographers David Octavius Hill and Robert Anderson. This iconic and romantic image shows him with a stonemasons chisel and mallet, leaning on a gravestone, with his sleeves rolled up in the typical workman style (though his clothing is that of a middle class man) and a shepherd’s plaid, his usual outdoor dress, draped across the stone on his right. 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 Portrait of Hugh Miller, Geologist, Writer and Stonemason ca. 1845 apprentices cart wright Edinburgh Highlands masons shoemakers stone carving Stonemason