1 10 2 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/2e78ea3f3192906c3adb5e1974535349.jpg ba7c0323317982271a7b06f68add3968 Exhibition Item Category Metal Wares Image copyright Crown Copyright HES Item Location Historic Environment Scotland Description This is a photograph of the cast-iron columns supporting the platform buildings at Aviemore Station in the Scottish Highlands. Each column is topped with a cast iron capital decorated with scrolling volutes and Corinthian-style foliage. The roof’s supporting spandrels contain wheel decorations (roundels) and inserts of typically Victorian-style scrolling stems. Cast iron was a defining material in the architecture of Britain’s railways where it was used to build the essential infrastructure of footbridges and engine sheds, but also, as here, to give an ornamental flourish to otherwise basic station structures. Victorian design borrowed from a range of historicist, oriental and floral styles so cast-iron’s strength and adaptability made it the perfect material for decorating street and public architecture. Aviemore was originally built for the Inverness and Perth Junction Railway in 1863, but was updated at the end of the century when the line was extended through Carrbridge. It is the largest station, except for Inverness, on the Highland Line. Aviemore’s engineer William Roberts worked on six buildings for the Highland Railway including the remodelling of Aviemore in 1898. His other stations include Brora, Newtonmore and Kingussie, the latter in particular shares stylistic characteristics with the platform buildings seen in this photograph. Constructed of a mixture of local stone and imported materials, the stations on the Highland Railway were built with a combination of Gothic and neoclassical style features. Neoclassical style details can be seen on these columns and capitals, but gothic-style wood and glass screens to protect passengers from inclement weather were also a feature of the platforms at Aviemore, Kingussie and Grantown. Tourism was a key incentive behind investment in the Carrbridge extension and station comforts were indicative of a station’s economic importance on the railway route to the Highlands. Scotland’s railways were built with the combined skills of artisans and engineers who worked for contractors tasked with bringing together the skilled workman needed to build each line’s various structures and buildings. A photograph of Aviemore during remodelling shows the men employed by James Robertson of Forres, including carpenters or joiners. Aviemore’s nearby locomotive shed was constructed by Inverness masons, William Alexander & Co, using steel girders and ironwork made at the Rose Street Foundry. The foundry previously made agricultural implements but prospered in the wave of late nineteenth century railway building moving into new premises in Inverness in1893. The updating of railways at the end of the century mobilised artisan skills in the building trades and also supported the subsidiary large-scale industries of stone quarrying and coal-mining. 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 Architectural Ironwork at Aviemore Station, ca.1898 agriculture carpenters cast-iron design engineers foundry gothic Highlands joiners metal neoclassical tourist industry