1 10 6 https://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 https://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/46cde8fd976cf493ace494c40541dcdb.jpg 133b1da829b4eb215d6c7b7ced091844 Exhibition Item Category Glass and Ceramics Image copyright City of Edinburgh Council Item Location Museum of Edinburgh Description This workshop in the Cannongate area of Edinburgh, part of a bigger enterprise known as the Holyrood Flint Glass Company, was for the finishing of high quality glasswares using skilled cutting and engraving techniques. It shows a mixture of machine technologies for powering the cutting wheels combined with apprentice-trained handwork. The workshop is lit from above and contains about forty wheels attended by as many craftsmen. The engravers, fewer in number, can be seen in the foreground to the right, with their smaller precision engraving tools powered by hand or by a foot treadle. Much of the engraving work undertaken for the firm was done elsewhere in sub-contracting workshops in nearby Abbeyhill, mainly staffed by Bohemian glass engravers famed for their skill and innovative design. The Holyrood Glass Co. also made more pedestrian wares for a mass market in their factory premises. The output of the workshop illustrated here, which was probably drawn for use in a catalogue or some other form of promotional literature, comprised a range of predominantly domestic wares which can be seen awaiting the cutting process and also stored in baskets on the floor. Various cutting wheels can also be seen on the floor. The Holyrood Glass Co. was known for its cut glass decanters and table glasses, along with fruit bowls, vases, glass oil lamps and dressing table sets. The company also produced fine glass door handles set with cameo portraits of notable figures of the day. They made to commission and for sale through their own retail premises in central Edinburgh and were frequently attendees at the great exhibitions in Scotland. A heavy glass vessel such as a large bowl could take up to 40 hours of work for the cutting stage. In 1868, at the time the works were described for the Scotsman newspaper by David Bremner as part of his ‘Industries of Scotland’ series, the company, founded at the start of the century, employed over 200 men. The owner, John Ford, who took over from an uncle, was apprentice trained as a glass cutter, making a fruit bowl as his ‘apprentice piece’. According to Bremner, ‘The wheels are fixed in a sort of turning-lathe and are driven by steam, and the variety of patterns that may be produced on them is almost unlimited. The workman rarely makes any attempt at drawing the device on the glass before cutting it. He simply divides the circumference of the article into sections by scratching with a file, and guided so far by these marks he trusts to his eye to the rest.’ The flint glass industry was heavily unionised by mid-century, with a national union with head quarters in Birmingham. The union determined wages and defined the terms for apprenticeships, setting a ratio of one apprentice to five journeymen in an endeavour to control entry to the trade in much the same way as the old trades houses. The glass-cutters had a separate trades organization of their own with union contributions ranging from 1s to 3s6d per week, which was higher than that of the ordinary glass makers. Glass makers, who were specialists in glass blowing techniques, earned from 20s to 38s a week; cutters earned from 20s to 34s per week; and the engravers were the best paid of all earning up to 40s per week. Apprentices, who served seven years, got just 4s to 5s per week and paid from 10s to £7 entry money when progressing to journeyman status, according to their specialist skill. These were good wages and employment conditions, according to Bremner, were mostly healthy. In the later nineteenth century there were damaging conflicts between the unions and the owners of the Edinburgh flint glass making companies over wages and terms. 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 Cutting and Engraving Shop, Holyrood Flint Glass Co. ca. 1860 apprentices design Edinburgh engravers exhibitions glass journeymen trades organization https://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/5be759118e2f4db1444666e938b5d8d1.png 36d2ed69eb670a2d480752c62f3549f5 Exhibition Item Category Jewellery and Silverware Description This view of St Giles’ Cathedral by London engravers James Sargant Storer (1771-1853) and Henry Sargant Storer (1796-1837) was published in Views in Edinburgh and its Vicinity, (Volume 2) shortly after the parade of small shops in the foreground were demolished to widen the streets of Edinburgh’s Old Town. The shops known as Luckenbooths, or ‘locked booths’ were associated with various small-scale trades, particularly the cheaper end of Edinburgh’s jewellery trade. The booths were a fixture in and around Edinburgh’s Parliament Square from at least the seventeenth century. An aerial plan of the cathedral, found in the sketchbook of nineteenth-century antiquarian Daniel Wilson, depicts St Giles’ Close in the years 1806-18, it includes reference to ‘Luckenbooth Street’ to the north and small shops belonging to ‘Green the Watchmaker’ and ‘Gordon McKenzie Jeweller’ situated on the south side of the church from which direction this engraving is taken. Luckenbooth Street was demolished in 1802 but the Parliament Square booths remained until 1817. Excavations on the walls of St Giles in preparation for the building of Lorimer’s Thistle Chapel in 1909, revealed the remains of fireplaces and containers for smelting glass in the old Luckenbooth cellars, suggesting that some may have contained small workshops. Despite their simplicity, Edinburgh’s nineteenth-century Luckenbooths embodied something of the lively buying and selling street culture in the Old Town at a time when luxury trades were migrating to the bridges that joined old Edinburgh with the new retailing centre of Princes Street in James Craig’s New Town. The booths were immortalised in painted depictions and writings, notably in Walter Scott’s, The Heart of Midlothian, in which Scott describes: ‘a huge pile of buildings called Luckenbooths, which for some inconceivable reason, our ancestors jammed into the midst of the principal street of the town (…) the hosiers, the glovers, the hatters, the mercers, the milliners, and all who dealt in the miscellaneous wares now termed haberdasher’s goods were to be found in the narrow alley’ (Chapter 5). In jewellery too, small goods made to appeal to a passing trade are thought to have been the stock-in trade of Luckenbooth sellers. Scottish love tokens, known from the end of the nineteenth century as ‘Luckenbooth brooches’, are particularly associated with the booths’ small-scale style of retailing. Typically heart-shaped and featuring the symbolic motif of a crown or two entwined hearts, the brooches were made in silver and gold, with more expensive versions incorporating jewels and precious stones. Like the booths themselves they found resonance with a particular strand of nineteenth-century romanticism, legend associates their simple heart-shaped forms with love gifts exchanged between Mary Queen of Scots and Lord Darnley. Father and son team, James and Henry Storer, were talented engravers and publishers of specialised works on topography and architecture producing many similar works to this one. James’s other works include, Views in North Britain Illustrative of the Works of Burns (1805) and The Cathedrals of Great Britain (1814–19). The latter was produced in collaboration with his son, and was credited by the architect Augustus Pugin as including the most accurate existing views of the buildings . Image copyright RCAHMS Item Location Historic Environment 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 Engraving of Luckenbooths at St. Giles's Church, 1819 Edinburgh engravers fashionable consumption gold jewellers silver 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 https://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/e65161bbcaf78d2fb500834894ef1164.jpg 6eb3ea8545ff874739852c3f19f957d3 Exhibition Item Title Glass Epergne Category Glass and Ceramics Description This cut glass epergne (table centrepiece) has 40 separate pieces. It is about a meter in height and was made by the Holyrood Flint Glass Company, Edinburgh, between 1840 and 1842, to mark the accession of Queen Victoria. An epergne was a glittering centrepiece for a dinner table and was often the largest and most valuable item of tableware on display. They were made of silver or glass or both, in multiple pieces, often embellished with coats of arms. Epergnes were sometimes made as wedding gifts or as commemorative presentation pieces to mark a special event. They were popular in the eighteenth century when they normally included bowls for candid fruits or nuts and they also typically held candles. In the nineteenth century, with changes in the way that meals were served and the introduction of oil lamps, the epergne was less likely to be used as a food container or for lighting effects and was either entirely decorative or held flower arrangements. This epergne was made for a royal table setting and was used on state occasions at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh. It was also displayed at the international exhibition displays that were mounted by the company – as in Edinburgh in 1886. The Holyrood Glass Company, with factory premises at the South Back of Canongate and a shop in central Edinburgh, was one of several celebrated glass making firms in Edinburgh. In 1868 it employed over 200 men and maintained mass production alongside higher end craft output, with a group of about 40 skilled engravers or glasscutters and apprentices. The owner of the company mid century, John Ford, who took over from an uncle, was apprentice trained as a glasscutter, making a cut glass fruit bowl as his apprenticeship piece. The company also maintained a strong relationship with a glass engraving workshop, J.H.B Millar, founded in the 1850s by a Bohemian entrepreneur with Bohemian workmen. J.H.B Millar was particularly associated with the development of the Scottish fern pattern design. This glass epergne represents a spectacular display of craftsmanship and ingenious design, with numerous cut glass elements in the eight separate bowls and on the upper section, which is topped with a glass replica of a crown and a Maltese cross. Richard Hunter, foreman glasscutter for the Holyrood Glass Company, made and probably also designed the piece, taking two years to complete it and bringing prestige and publicity for his employers in the process. The company was know for table pieces with a high craft input, including their specialist lines in cut glass lamps, some decorated with ceramic cameos and brass fixings. Other items were made for royal customers including a cut glass toilet service for Princess Beatrice in 1897, which was describe in the Edinburgh Evening News as intended for use at Balmoral but also on show at the company premises at 39 Princess Street Edinburgh for a few days prior to dispatch. But most of the company’s output and their main source of revenue were more prosaic and comprise mass produced glassware for the middle class home Image copyright Museum of Edinburgh Item Location Museum 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 Glass Epergne, Holyrood Flint Glass Company, ca.1841 apprentices Bohemia Brass ceramics Edinburgh engravers exhibitions fern pattern glass middle class Queen Victoria silver tableware https://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/4572bd10af1b75a30fc400ddafde4d9c.jpg 0421fc4407e53941551a71796d75a048 Exhibition Item Category Metal Description This unattributed photograph of the interior of a type foundry, which is possibly in London but would have been much the same as those found in Edinburgh, including the firm of Miller & Richards in Chapel Street, shows men and women in the casting shop, with men casting the letters and women dressing the type of excess metal. The men, with their dirty aprons, are stood alongside hot and complex machines where the lead type is cast, whilst the women workers are seated for the less skilled work in a cooler position by the windows. Type founding – the process of making the individual letters that are put together by compositors to make a page of text - began in Scotland with the Glasgow works of Alexander Wilson, who in the 1770s was responsible for the types used by the Foulis Press in the production of beautiful editions of the classics under the patronage of Glasgow University. The punch cutters and engravers who first worked in Scotland were mostly trained in London, but by c.1800 Wilson also employed a number of Scottish craftsmen including William Miller, his foreman, who set up his own business in Edinburgh in 1808. Miller joined with his son-in-law, Walter Richard, in 1842 and the firm of Miller & Richard of 65 Nicholson Street close to the University of Edinburgh, became the largest in Scotland employing over 500 ‘men and boys’ by the 1860s. Metal type was made from a mix of lead, tin and antimony. Before type could be made, however, the first operation was to cut a set of punches in fine steel, which was the most skilled element of the type making process. Many punch cutters were self-employed craftsmen who worked for a number of firms and some of those responsible for the finest typefaces produced in Scotland were London based. In addition to the punchers and type founders, a typical type foundry in the mid nineteenth century would also employ skilled craftsmen to make the wooden and brass frame-work or ‘furniture’ for setting the types. Skilled women were long associated with the book and paper trades, though they were never as well paid as men. Type dressing, sorting and packing was one area of work and also book sewing and cloth binding. Leather binding was normally viewed as a male skill. In a city famed for its publishing and printing houses, women were employed as compositors in Edinburgh from the later nineteenth century, having a higher ratio of women to men in the industry (c.1:10) than in any other city in Britain. A heavily unionised industry, the Scottish Typographical Society formed in 1853 had c.6,500 members at its height. Yet the history of the book trades, with its type foundries, printers, publishers and ancillary trades such as engravers, illustrators and binders, was one of slowly diminishing craft identity, as new technologies undermined old skills. Though it was for many years one of the key employment sectors in Edinburgh the letter press industry largely ended in the 1960s following the wide adoption of offset lithography. The firm of Miller & Richards ceased trading in 1951 and the premises were demolished – a fate that befell most of the workshop premises that once accommodated Edinburgh’s large craft economy in this part of the city. The site that was once occupied by the type foundry is now the location for the Central Edinburgh Mosque. Image copyright Napier University Item Location Napier University 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 Workers in a Type Foundry, ca. 1910 Brass Edinburgh engravers Glasgow lead leather London unions women’s industries wood