1 10 5 https://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/e0976010d7379a0a792aed43645f6f10.jpg 3231c3097fd7a30fab43ede69f873b69 Exhibition Item Category Metal Wares Image copyright National Museums Scotland Item Location National Museums Scotland Description This image shows the ‘pattern shop’ and foundry at the agricultural implement making firm of Alexander Jack & Sons of Maybole in Ayrshire in the mid 1880s. It is one of a series of photograph of the different departments of the firm, which employed up to a 150 men at its height in the first decade of the twentieth century, many of them skilled craftsmen. In the foreground are some of the molding boxes, blocks and sand that are used for making metal castings, with a wide variety of patterns and models stored and displayed along the walls. Castings were made here in both iron and brass, with some of great weight, hence the iron rig and pulley system for lifting that is seen in the middle of the image. The rotund figure facing the camera is probably the foreman, who would have been a skilled blacksmith or iron founder and there are another eleven men at work in the image. Though this was a workshop on a large scale with some mechanisation, according to local report ‘old craft and new machines work hand-in-hand.’ The firm was founded by small-town craftsman, Alexander Jack, who started as a joiner and cabinet maker in a business that soon failed. But ever the entrepreneur, from 1852, with only limited capital, Jack began making small tools for other craftsmen and soon expanded into agricultural implements and vehicles making, taking advantage of the local demand from farming and the nearby railway line for transport to markets beyond Ayrshire. Jack’s business partner and successor was John Marshall, an engineer, who also became Provost of Maybole and served as President of the Society of Scottish Agricultural Engineers. The firm, which gained many prizes at exhibitions, survived to 1966. The craft communities that were supported in Scotland’s small towns were a significant feature of the nineteenth century. Maybole was a long-established market town at the heart of agricultural south-west Scotland, just a few miles south of the port of Ayr. Bartholomew’s 1887 Gazetteer of the British Isles gave a population of 6,623 and identified the main employments as boot and shoe making, leather tanning and agricultural implement making. The weaving trade, which had once been important, had much declined from its peak in the 1820s. However, textiles still flourished, with women in the town and in the countryside beyond extensively employed in the home-based Ayrshire whitework embroidery industry, making finely ‘flowered’ cottons mainly for use in baby christening gowns. 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 Alexander Jack & Sons, Agricultural Implement Maker, ca. 1885 Ayrshire blacksmiths Brass cabinet maker embroiderers engineers exhibitions foundry iron joiners patterns photographers shoemakers textiles weavers https://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/e97dbd1b24c6f4ac1d133f15f58d18e7.jpg 33621ee8edbc043e6de9d708203537b7 Exhibition Item Category Textiles Image copyright University of Edinburgh Item Location Private Collection Description This detail of a 19th century christening gown is a typical example of Ayrshire work consisting of firm satin stitches on fine cotton cloth with areas of cut-out cloth which are filled with fine, needlepoint lace stitches. It has a simple design of flowers and a trailing vine worked in a combination of solid satin stitches, curved lines of ‘laddering’, and overcast eyelets that anchor two types of needlepoint fillings. Traditional whitework items included sleeves, chemisettes, baby’s robes, bonnets and trimmings, though changing trends in nineteenth-century fashion also dictated different styles and products. For example, over 200 designs for fashionable embroidered collars were copyright-registered by the firm of Sharps & Co. of Paisley between 1843 and 1844. Irish lace was expensive and worn by only the wealthiest women whereas whitework offered a pleasing, affordable alternative. The whitework industrywas introduced to Ayrshire in the 1820s, with five principal producers listed in the Ayr Post Office Directory by 1830. Its production increased steadily over the next two decades. The New Statistical Accounts of Scotland (1834-45) show that there were nineteen parishes in Ayrshire alone where women were working as muslin embroiderers or ‘flowerers’. The intricacy and delicacy of the work shows the skill of its makers, though the notion of whitework as a congenial cottage industry fails to recognise the scale and speed of its manufacture in the mid-nineteenth century. Outline designs were printed on cloth by Glasgow-based, ‘sewed muslin’ manufacturers who distributed them to Ayrshire embroiderers in a putting-out system of production. Each design was sent with information on how long the embroiderer had to complete it and what rate they would be paid. Skills were passed from mother to daughter with single households often containing more than one sewer. A single hand could complete small items like collars, whereas more complex items such as christening robes could include the work of several women. Unfinished examples suggest that outlines and edgings could be completed by less experienced sewers whereas needlepoint sections demanded the skills of highly experienced embroiderers. Despite the beauty and versatility of Ayrshire whitework changes in fashion and mechanisation led to its decline as a large-scale, home-based craft industry in the 1880s. 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 Whitework Christening Gown, mid-19th century Ayrshire copyright and patenting design embroiderers Glasgow home industries https://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 https://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/422d579e5821359d52960e2143168d70.jpg 6b0e430ebefc1534a1d63314555678fc Exhibition Item Title Silver Teapot, Robert Gray and Son Category Buildings Description This round silver Rococo styled teapot has a domed top and is set on a base with a gadrooned band. A cast plaque has been applied to the side showing two greyhounds hunting a hare and the lettering ‘Ardrossan Coursing Club MCCCCXXVll’. It was made by Glasgow silversmiths, Robert Gray and Son. The teapot’s fashionable design with additional applied and engraved detail identifies it as a sporting trophy. The top, handle and spout are decorated with a swirling foliate and floral rococo-styled pattern. The NMS owns another silver hare-coursing trophy made by the same firm in 1823, this time in the form of a circular footed basked with handle decorated with a cast band of vine leaves and grapes on the inner edge, bearing the same cast motif of two greyhounds and hare and engraved detail of the prize winner. These wares, the teapot and the basket, were presumably also made without the additional decoration for domestic customers. Silverware production was transformed ca1820 with increases in the supply of silver from the Americas and Australia, reducing costs and allowing expansion into the growing middle class market. Design influences were conservative and mostly backward referencing, with the Neoclassical and Rococo style predominating. The gadroon motif on the base and upper rim of this teapot was commonly found on the edges of furniture as well as silver ware of the period and is of neoclassical inspiration, though the piece as a whole is of a hybrid design. A base like this could be used for other items in the product range. Robert Gray (c. 1755-1829) is regarded as one of Scotland’s finest silver makers, with a firm in Glasgow’s Trongate from c. 1776 and a broad output that included flatware, candlesticks, presentation cups and plates and the ubiquitous silver tea service. At the time the teapot was made, the firm was managed by William Gray (1781-1850), son of the founder, who was his father’s apprentice from 1794-1802. Robert Gray and Son trained a generation of fine silversmiths, many emigrating overseas, including Robert Hendery of Montreal, who completed his apprenticeship in Glasgow in 1837 and was in business in Canada by 1841. The Ardrossan Coursing Club, for which this teapot was made, ran its hounds over Lord Eglinton’s lands in the vicinity of the Ayrshire town of Ardrossan. Hare coursing was a popular blood sport amongst rural elites and presentation cups or other silver items, including silver dog collars, were awarded as prizes. Andrew Brown Esq of Thornhill near Stewarton in Ayrshire, whose name as winner is engraved on the teapot along with the name of his dog ‘Loo’, was a gentleman farmer. Robert Gray and Son made many prizes and presentations pieces and also decorated silverwares made by other firms. The silverware trade involved complex relationships between firms with highly skilled provincial makers sourcing some of the components for their standard wares from big London firms. 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 Silver Teapot, Robert Gray and Son, Glasgow, 1827 aristocratic patronage Ayrshire Glasgow London neoclassical rococo silver silversmith https://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