1 10 3 https://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 https://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/5e8a4e5d60abb7c994529b67ca32bd5f.jpg f9da39162a622b20635a54c38a407900 Exhibition Item Category Buildings Image copyright National Museums Scotland Item Location National Museum Scotland Description The banks of the river Dee in highland Aberdeenshire are dotted with castles and mansions mostly built in the nineteenth century as shooting lodges. They include Queen Victoria’s Balmoral and Mar Lodge, owned by the duke of Fife and his duchess, Princess Louise, which was destroyed by a fire in June 1895. Descriptions of the fire give an indication of the tradesmen and communities that great buildings supported. It began when a group of Aberdeen plumbers were fitting a ventilation pipe into a closet near the Duke’s rooms and carried a pot of molten lead into the house. A draught from the windows blew a spark onto wood shavings used to protect pipes from frosting and a fire took hold, spreading rapidly through the building. The plumbers were joined in their efforts to extinguish the fire by estate workers summoned by the overseer and by a team of masons who were on site, led by a builder, Mr MacDonald. The later may have been George Macdonald of Aberdeen. The house contents were saved, but not the lodge, which was rebuilt shortly after. The architect for the new Mar Lodge was A. Marshal Mackenzie of Aberdeen, who had recently completed Crathie Church at Balmoral. Born in Elgin and based in Aberdeen, Mackenzie had an established team of skilled Aberdeen craftsmen to draw on for his northeast Scotland work, who lived in bothies on-site for the duration of his building projects. The Mar Lodge construction was famed for its use of locally grown wood in the building itself and for the furniture. This photograph of thirty-five men, with their trades and professions indicated by their clothing and tools, posed in front of Mar Lodge as it was nearing completion, shows pride in craft and community. The men seated on the ground at the front are plumbers, with one of them holding an impressive U-bend pipe and another displaying the soles of his hob-nailed boots. The man seated on the far left is holding tinsmith scissors. The suited young man with a watch-chain on the right is probably a clerk and the older man on the middle left with rolled plans under his arm is the builder overseeing the works. The men dressed in white are painters or plasterers. The second to back row has the carpenters, with their saws and planes displayed. Some of those in the image are estate workers, including a ghillie wearing a deerstalker hat and tweeds at the top left. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Craftsmen at Mar Lodge, Braemar, ca. 1900 Aberdeen architects builders carpenters decorators furniture plasterers plumbers tinsmiths wood https://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/b95040051b68e0e642a79d9f8198d050.jpg 0c7fa3c104cd4509116000a230569190 Exhibition Item Category Buildings Image copyright Tain and District Museums Trust Item Location Tain and District Museum Description This photograph taken by William Smith shows workman carrying out repairs or alterations to the exterior of Balnagown Castle, Kildary, near Tain. Artisans were employed to build new buildings in the nineteenth-century but their skills were also needed to repair and maintain Scotland’s historic structures. The hand-tools in this photograph suggest that the men were slaters or carpenters, both were skilled trades taught through the nineteenth-century apprenticeship system. The men’s ages appear to range from twenty to forty. The man standing at the highest point, though not the most senior in years, was likely the foreman, his status indicated by his starched white collar. Almost all the workmen wear waistcoats and cloth caps, the standard form of dress for skilled manual workers at the time. Some estates employed their own carpenters and road-menders but large-scale building works were most often contracted out to local companies so it wasn't unusual for ‘Notices to Builders’ to be posted in Scottish newspapers advertising for a single firm or contractor to coordinate the work of all the masons, carpenters and slaters required to complete a specific building. Balnagown Castle is the historic home of the Clan Ross chieftains located in the Ross and Cromarty region of the Highlands. The building originates from the thirteenth century though by the time these workmen were employed it had been renovated and expanded by several owners. The rectangular ground plan of the building dates from the 1760s but the Castle was further developed from the mid-nineteenth century. Charles Henry Augustus Frederick Lockhart Ross (1872-1842) was an eccentric character and the inventor of the Ross Rifle. He was the owner of Balnagown in the 1880s and so the likely commissioner of these workmen. William Smith (1824-1906), bookseller, newsagent and photographer had premises in Tain’s High Street from the early 1850s to his death in 1906. Smith’s photographs capture the spectrum of Victorian society featuring subjects as varied as portraits of Tain characters, visiting royalty, and images of craftsmen working outdoors or in their workshops. How Smith took this photograph of a very high turret is unknown though it’s possible he positioned his camera on a lower level of scaffolding. The Balnagown workmen display great confidence in the wooden scaffold that was probably fixed by their own hands. Yet, the dangers of working with heavy materials in high and exposed conditions such as this too often led to accidents and fatalities. An 1881 edition of The Dundee Courier and Argus (17 February) recorded how two slaters fell to their deaths whilst working on the new University of Edinburgh buildings. 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 Workmen at Balnagown Castle, 1880s builders carpenters Highlands photographers slaters Tain