1 10 4 https://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/af30322f9140413cd01f89cc36e0fd00.jpg 66ef9c40a95c97e975a515f5d37c819a Exhibition Item Category Glass and Ceramics Image copyright ©Falkirk Community Trust: Ref: P14070 Item Location Callendar House, Falkirk Description Production processes in Britain’s potteries were largely divided by gender until the twentieth-century. This is a portrait of a group of female workers at the Bridgeness Pottery in Bo’Ness near Falkirk. On the board in front of the group is chalked the words 'Bridgeness Pottery Spongers', showing them to be the young women responsible for hand decorating domestic ware in the pottery’s sponging department. The Bridgeness Pottery was founded by C.W.McNay in 1888 and operated in the Bo’Ness area until 1958. Spongeware is the term used to describe pottery decorated by applying colour using a piece of natural sponge. It is widely considered to be a Scottish technique that was first used in the 1830s and then put into commercial production a decade later by Staffordshire potter William Adams. Sponging was an economic means of producing simple, two-dimensional patterns in one or two colours on inexpensive pots. The women in the photograph would have used carved pieces of natural sponge to apply repeat patterns to the unglazed pottery (biscuit-ware) before firing. Popular spongeware patterns included flowers, animals, ornamental lozenges and borders. Female workers were nearly always employed at the finishing end of production where they decorated wares using a variety of techniques. Hand-painting and gilding demanded specialist training at an art-school, whereas applying transfer designs and sponging were techniques learned on the job. Nevertheless sponging required a coordination of hand and eye and a sense of design as described by Margaret Finlay who worked in the sponging department at the Bridgeness Pottery from 1916 to the 1927. She described the process of sponging as part of a working day that started and 6 o’clock in the morning and finished at 6 o’clock at night: “I was in the Sponging and you had a wheel… you worked it with this hand and you did your sponging with this one and you had an arm rest and you could do your colourings with the plates for the different colour stuffs you had. You had a bit of sponge in every one of these things…Every time you worked it you turned the wheel round with your fingers underneath and you turned it round and got the pattern on. If you were going to put lines round plates or anything, you had a wee brush, long to a point… and when you turned the wheel round this was going all the time and your hand was making a line round it.” (http://bonesspottery.co.uk/fim.html) Bridgeness was just one of a number of potteries operating in Bo’Ness in the nineteenth century with six different works operating out of the district between 1766 and 1958. The McNay family were also partners in the Bo’Ness Pottery (est.1784), which went into liquidation in 1898 transferring its trade in transfer-printed goods for Empire markets along with machinery and copper-plates to the Bridgeness works. Nevertheless, emphasis at the Bridgeness Pottery remained on serviceable goods in the form of functional sponge-decorated household pottery rather than luxury productions. In a dinner to mark the opening of the pottery, the founder C.W.McNay described its activities as not ‘attempting to do what the great potteries in England did, who could get large sums for making a single pot’ but instead competing ‘with the best of them in producing the more common article… broken day after day to the grief of all housewives’ (Falkirk Herald, April 21,1888). Perhaps for this reason very few examples of Bridgeness Pottery spongeware have survived. But the technique was used widely in Scottish potteries and surviving examples have been accredited to potteries in Kirkcaldy, Glasgow and Prestonpans 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 Bridgeness Pottery Spongers, ca.1910 Bo-ness ceramics decorators design design schools Falkirk pottery women craftworkers women’s industries https://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/6ef4983c4bb5b26a8a23e73113a995f2.jpg de6f6275feb555e6e2475f677b63cb1d Exhibition Item Title Willow Tea Room, Glasgow Category Buildings Description This is a photograph of the Willow Tea Room in Glasgow, which occupied an open plan space at 217 Sauchiehall Street in one of Glasgow’s most fashionable shopping streets. It was designed for restaurateur Kate Cranston by Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868-1928) while a partner at the architectural practice of Honeyman Keppie and Mackintosh. This photograph of the front saloon was published in the Glasgow Herald shortly after it opened in 1903. Such was Mackintosh’s international reputation that the photograph was also published in Germany’s leading art journal, Dekorative Kunst, two years later. The freestanding structure in the foreground of the photograph houses two tables with specially designed chairs, making four dining place-settings in total. The structure is topped with an elaborate wrought iron flower-stand comprising a broad glass bowl caged within a wrought iron corona. Mackintosh’s interest in unusual divisions of architectural space created open-sided eating ‘islands’ for Cranston’s clientele, providing the occupants with a sense of enclosure by offering a private space within a public one. The photograph provides a glimpse into the general lunchroom at the rear and into the whiter, brighter Salon de Luxe on the upper mezzanine floor. Decorative metalwork, painted wood and decorative gesso panels were handcrafted elements in Mackintosh’s elegant and functional tea room interiors. Wrought iron uprights and rails divide the downstairs lunchrooms from the more exclusive dining and leisure areas higher in the building. Kate Cranston had previously employed Mackintosh to design decorative details and the complete interior for her restaurant at 205-217 Ingram Street, Glasgow (c.1900). The Willow Tea Room was one of a series of notable creative collaborations between Mackintosh and his wife Margaret Macdonald (1864-1933). The couple were married in 1900 and Margaret designed decorative gesso panels for a number of Mackintosh's interiors. Mackintosh was born to Margaret and William McIntosh, a clerk in the Glasgow police force in 1868. He studied at Glasgow School of Art (GSA) under Francis (Fra) Newbery and met Herbert McNair whilst serving as an architect’s apprentice between 1885 and 1889. Mackintosh’s and McNair’s work with the sisters Margaret and Francis Macdonald defined a particular aspect of what has become known as The Glasgow Style, notable for its sinuous forms and use of Celtic imagery and symbolism. In 1900 Mackintosh and Macdonald exhibited a wall-and-furniture ensemble at the Secession Exhibition in Vienna, including decorative gesso friezes by Margaret that were later installed at Cranston’s Ingram Street restaurant. Mackintosh’s most well known architectural projects include the Glasgow School of Art (1899) and Hill House (1904) built for the publisher Walter Blackie, but he also worked on commissions in London (Derngate, c.1917) and designed furnishings for clients and exhibitions. The National Museum Scotland’s collection includes a wooden settle designed by Mackintosh with lead panels possibly designed by Margaret. It was made by the decorating firm of craftsmen, J. & W. Guthrie, Glasgow and was exhibited at the 1896 Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society exhibition in London. Mackintosh commissioned the construction of his furnishing and interiors from key Glasgow’ artisan manufacturers, and over 30 firms were involved in the creation of the Willow Tea Rooms. Image copyright Newsquest (Herald & Times) Item Location The Herald Photographic Archive Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Interior of the Willow Tea Room, Glasgow, 1903 architects Arts and Crafts Celtic revival design schools exhibitions Glasgow London women craftworkers wrought iron https://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/1b922adb3bb926696d5629675f84d9e9.jpg 062b9aa52d7fa79f096b01938b0c29da Exhibition Item Title William Trotter Chair Category Wood Description This carved mahogany hall chair with intricate rope and anchor design, was made by William Trotter for Trinity House, Edinburgh in 1816. It is one of a set of six, and is in a typical ‘hall chair’ design, with an elaborate armorial back and solid seat suitable for an entrance hall where users were likely to be seated for a short time and wearing wet outer garments. The chairs feature the Trinity House emblem, ‘PERVIA VIRTUTI SYDERA TERRA MARE’ (‘The earth, the sea and the stars are conquerable by men of courage.’) Trinity House is the home of the trade regulation body known as the Incorporation of Ship Owners and Shipmasters. The building, in Leith, built in 1816 to designs by Thomas Brown, is on the site of the former Trinity House, which dates back to the sixteenth century. The chairs were designed for the new building and Trotter was paid £15 15s in 1817 for the commission. William Trotter (1772-1833) was Scotland’s most celebrated early nineteenth century cabinetmaker. His family were long established in trade in Edinburgh and he was a significant figure in the Merchant Company, where he was Master in 1819. He served as Dean of Guild on the Edinburgh Town Council and Lord Provost. He operated through various partnerships before setting up a business in own right in 1805, with extensive showrooms at the east end of Princes Street. The Trinity House hall chair was made at the height of his success, when he was known for restrained neoclassical design. His commissions included other Edinburgh institutions, such as the Signet Library ca.1822 and domestic customers, such as local M.P. John Home Robertson for Paxton House, a country mansion in Berwickshire, as well as the numerous residents of Edinburgh’s quickly expanding New Town. Trotter’s vast output was elegant in design and used the best quality woods. The Trinity House architect, Thomas Brown (1781-1850) was Superintendent of the City Works in Edinburgh from 1819. He had a large local country house practice and through this and his connection with the council, would have known William Trotter well. It is possible that Brown designed the hall chairs, though a workshop such as Trotters would have employed many skilled craftsmen, some trained in design at the Trustees Drawing Academy. Trotter introduced London styles of furniture to Scotland, making use of pattern books such as those produced by Sheraton and Chippendale. He and other leading cabinetmakers sought to standardise prices and dimensions in the trade, publishing the Edinburgh Cabinet Makers’ Book of Prices from 1805. Trotter’s celebrated showroom was listed in tourist guides of the period as somewhere to visit when in Edinburgh. According to Thomas Dibden in his 1838 Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour it comprised ‘vistas filled with mahogany and rosewood objects of great temptation.’ Image copyright Crown Copyright reproduced courtesy of Historic Scotland Item Location Trinity House, Edinburgh Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Hall Chair, William Trotter, 1816 architects cabinet maker chair design schools Edinburgh furniture London neoclassical tourist industry https://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/77ef0a2e4c659709b81293eb6c767671.jpg fd76f556a76424b380a6536579e0463e Exhibition Item Title Paisley Shawl Category Textiles Description This hand-painted design for a Paisley shawl is stamped ‘Board of Trustees for Manufactures in Scotland’. Painted on oiled paper and mounted on cartridge paper it is for a shawl quarter that combines Indian-style flower and pinecone patterns arranged in a colourful, central decorative medallion. The design is thought to be one of those retained when the Board of Trustees gave a collection of 196 samples and designs to pattern designer and teacher of pattern drawing Thomas Barker Holdway in 1839. Holdway won the Trustees' Academy's prizes for shawl designs 1831-33 and was sent to study French designs in Paris in 1834. He taught at the Trustees' Academy between 1835-1839, leaving to start classes in Glasgow following the decline of the shawl industry in Edinburgh. A keen defender of the profession, Holdway gave evidence to the Select Committee on the Copyright of Designs in 1840 arguing for extended protection of one year on copyright-protected designs (Reports From Committees, vol.3. 148-160) Shawl designers worked anonymously so we don’t know whether Holdway drew this particular pattern, but we know that collections of ‘good design’ were maintained throughout the nineteenth century to be used as teaching tools in the education of new designers. The Board of Trustees for Fisheries, Manufacturers and Improvements in Scotland was established in 1727 to promote and support the development of Scotland’s industries. It established a Drawing Academy in Edinburgh in 1760. Paisley shawls were produced in both woven and printed form, and the designer was the first in a line of skilled artisans involved in their production. Painted designs were copied on to squared point-paper and this provided a set of visual instructions to the hand-loom weaver who translated the pattern into woven cloth using brilliantly-coloured yarns produced by skilled dyers. Before the introduction of chemical dyes in the 1850s, natural dyestuffs such as saffron and chrome were used to dye and print shawls. For printed shawl production, design drawings like this were given to specialist block-cutters to create a printing block for each colour of the design. Paisley, near Glasgow, was not the only centre of Indian-style shawl production in Britain but the achievements of its highly skilled weavers made the town’s name synonymous with fashionable shawls. In 1842 Queen Victoria purchased seventeen Paisley shawls, including the shawl she wore to the christening of the Prince of Wales the same year. The British displays at The Great Exhibition of 1851 showcased Scottish shawls described as ‘long India coloured and square compartment cashmeres’. The Scottish industry struggled to recreate the cashmere softness of the Indian originals yet Paisley shawls commanded high prices amongst Britain’s fashionable elite for their artistry in design, colour and weaving. Indian-style patterns were not the only style of shawl produced in Paisley, manufacturers such as W and J Drysdale, and James and David Paton also copyright-registered designs for brilliantly coloured plaids and tartans. Image copyright University of Edinburgh Item Location Centre for Research Collections, University of Edinburgh Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Design for a Paisley Shawl, ca.1839 aristocratic patronage Board of Trustees copyright and patenting craft communities design schools designers exhibitions fashionable consumption foreign craft influence Glasgow Paisley