1 10 7 https://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/3057981274521fcc57d4d7fcbee74c83.jpg 95b2e0fca56040aa7bfd18aba746bf3b Exhibition Item Image copyright Tain and District Museum's Trust Item Location Tain and District Museum Description This photograph shows the Interior of Danny Thompson's cabinet makers workshop in Upper King Street, Tain in Ross-shire. It shows six men, a typical workshop size, all wearing white aprons, with the proprietor stood in the center. The figure in the background on the left appears to be a teenage apprentice. The workshop is a simple, single-story wooden building. Another view taken from outside about ten years later shows it adjoining a windowed building that acted as a showroom. The firm was founded by Danny Thompson, a local man, in the 1880s, but was sold to William Fraser, who appears on the left of the photograph, in the early twentieth century. Fraser retained the original name and D. Thompson & Co. continued in existence through several ownerships to 1994. A number of partly finished objects can be identified in the photograph, including picture and mirror frames, a carved chair back and hall-stand or mirror back. The local museum in Tain has a carved chair attributed to Danny Thompson that is very similar to the one displayed here. Upholstered cushions and textiles can be seen on the left. Danny Thompson, the master craftsman and proprietor, is stood behind a lady’s davenport writing desk, which was a complex and expensive piece of furniture made for elite customers. These items have been arranged in the image for narrative effect and to show the range of products made. It is unlikely that tasks like upholstery work were normally undertaken in such a dusty environment as is evident here. To the rear of the workshop, fixed to the roof, is a wheel with a mechanized belt-drive, for running a sawing or turning machine and there are numerous hand tools in racks on the wall. Wood is stored above in the rafters and prints and designs are pasted onto the walls and ceiling. In common with most local workshops of this type, Thompson also made coffins, though none are visible in this image and he fitted out house interiors with wood paneling and chimney pieces. One of his most notable commissions was Morangie House (now a hotel) on the outskirts of Tain, an eight-bedroom mansion designed by architect Andrew Maitland of Keith in Banffshire for the wealthy widow of a local farmer, on which he and his men worked extensively in 1902-3. The image here was the work of William Smith, a bookseller, newsagent and photographer with premises in Tain’s High Street from the early 1850s to his death in 1906. He took many photographs of local scenes and people including tradesmen in their places of work and servants connected with some of the great houses nearby such as Balnagown Castle, home of the Ross family. He also published a series of colour-tinted photographic postcards for tourists showing notable Tain buildings and street scenes. He erected a special glasshouse to the rear of his shop for his successful studio portrait business. As a thriving town in a prosperous north-east farming district Tain provided constant business for craftsmen like Danny Thompson, who made goods in the latest fashion according to demand and also furnished a steady stream of customers for William Smith. 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 Danny Thompson’s Cabinet Makers Workshop, Tain, ca. 1890 apprentices cabinet maker design furniture Highlands photographers portraits Tain textiles tools tourist industry wood https://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/b0b0a9036971089b222e266475cca442.jpg abb5df24f65625e50911923357722330 Exhibition Item Category Textiles Image copyright National Museums Scotland Item Location National Museums Scotland Description This photograph shows the tailors and apprentices in the workroom of John D. Findlay, Clothier and Gentlemen’s Outfitter, 26 Barn Street, Strathaven. Tailors and their assistants traditionally worked sitting crossed leg on large tables. A raised surface helped to support the weight of heavy woollen fabrics typical to men’s tailoring, and kept garments clean whilst they were being stitched by hand. In earlier centuries tailors sat in the windows of their shops to take advantage of the natural light, however the bare wall in this photograph suggests that Findlay’s men worked in a back room workshop. Despite the smiles of some of the younger men it is a rather bleak depiction of the working conditions of men working in the traditional needle trades. John Findlay, son of grocer and sometime silk handloom weaver William Findlay, was listed in the 1901 census as a tailor and employer living with his wife Elizabeth at 29 Jamesfield Cottage, Strathaven. Strathaven’s changing fortunes in the last quarter of the nineteenth century likely influenced John’s decision not to follow his father into the weaving trade. The introduction of silk weaving in 1788, followed by the building of a cotton mill in 1790 made Strathaven a textile town throughout the nineteenth century. In 1826, at the peak of production it had 900 working looms and weaving shops could be found in every street of this small South Lanarkshire town. Strathaven continued to thrive by producing textile designers and card cutters when Jacquard looms were introduced, but the mid-century introduction of power-looms undermined the handloom weaving industry. When the railway opened in 1863 younger men sought work outside the village, and by 1900, when John Findlay was 29, there were only 150 looms still at work in Strathaven. Findlay’s tailors shop was in Barn Street, a short connecting road between the weaver’s shops of Green Street and the agricultural engineers, corn mills and wood yards in the Commercial Road. Descriptions of the local shops and trades mark Strathaven as typical of a small Scottish town once prosperous on textiles but fallen on harder times. Local agriculture maintained the business of a saddler and harness maker but by 1911 more modern forms of transport were also in evidence in the form of the Sandsknow Motor and Cycle Works. In clothing and general drapery Findlay’s competed with several other local tailors as well as a General Warehousman stocking linens, shirts, pants, braces, caps and ties. The Scottish National Association of Tailors was formed in 1866 to maintain standards of training and represent the interests of journeyman tailors but the invention of the sewing machine undermined the need for traditional skills and by the end of the century the National Association also represented factory operatives and all aspects of the tailoring trades were threatened by sweated working conditions and the introduction of cheaper female labour. 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 Workshop of Tailor, John D. Findlay, Strathaven, ca. 1900 Lanark silk Strathaven tailors textiles trades organization unions weavers 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/f11859cabdaab4be34d00ca4ab54ce0d.jpg 6c3df765f489a72728aeb811cc7a4a96 Exhibition Item Image copyright Glasgow City Council: Archives Item Location The Mitchell Library 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 Clachan' at the Glasgow Exhibition, 1911 exhibitions Glasgow spinning wheel textiles tourist industry https://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/1477ce33b84747a7a1c56bd1d676ad3f.jpg eaa36f24fb878109da53a496ec9eb97d Exhibition Item Category Buildings Image copyright Aberdeen City Council Item Location Aberdeen Maritime Museum Description Traditional skills were mobilised in the service of new industries as well as old ones. This photograph shows a group of the woodworkers and metalworkers employed at the Sandliands Chemical Works near Aberdeen. The range of tools suggests that the men and their apprentices were responsible for maintenance as well as running the factory’s machines. At the centre of the photograph is a blacksmith’s anvil and the boy to the right holds an elaborate bellows. A cooper stands to the left of the photograph next to a group of stacked barrels, while other men hold hammers, specially adapted wrenches or traditional woodworking tools. Sandilands Chemical Works opened in 1848 to process the bi-products of the adjacent Aberdeen Gas Works, though by the end of the century it had diversified into the production of various organic chemicals. The works was owned and run by John Miller, one of three l brothers who were influential in Scotland’s early chemical industries. George Miller & Co ran the Rumford Street Oil Works in Glasgow, and James Miller the Forth and Clyde Oil Works also in Glasgow. All their businesses were dependent on local supplies of coal or gas and the availability of a capable workforce. In 1892 The Scotsman estimated that 1000 to 1300 men worked in the principal branches of Scotland’s chemical industries across five major works and that 220 men worked in the Clydesdale district alone. Yet, much of the workforce was itinerant or temporary with young men forced by circumstances from Ireland making up an estimated 75% of Scotland’s chemical workers and only 5% of the workforce coming from the Scottish Highlands (11th May 1892, p.11). The Sandilands works was known locally as ‘Stinky Millers’ probably due its more noxious products which included asphalt, distilled coal-tar, naptha, benzole, vitriole, manure, sulphuric acid and ammonia. Chemicals were important to the development of several Scottish industries, as components in fertiliser (ammonia water), as a solvent used in the rubber industry (naptha), or in the development of new textile dyes or processes in clothing manufacture. The bitumen, a form of semi-liquid petroleum, produced at Sandilands was used to seal the surfaces of Scotland roads and railways. The skilled artisans in this photograph probably enjoyed better working conditions than those employed as general labourers at the works. Chemicals were a new industry where twelve hour working across seven days was common practice. A witness reporting an 1862 Labour Commission enquiry noted ‘that the only men exempt from Sunday work were joiners, plumbers, coopers and engineers’ (The Scotsman, 11th May 1892). Poor ventilation, inadequate protection and dangerous conditions were common hazards for chemical workers, one man was killed and two were injured in an accident installing an elevated water tank at Sandilands in 1915. 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 at the Sandilands Chemical Works, ca.1910 apprentices blacksmiths coopers engineers joiners new industries railways textiles https://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/69a9d9180b39d121d8a5048ff1891135.jpg f65f5707b501bafb6c6e08927bdb1297 Exhibition Item Image copyright Tain and District Museum's Trust Item Location Tain and District Museum Category Portraits Description This photograph of Mrs and Miss Ross of Tain in north-east Scotland, taken by John Ross, an accountant in Tain and son of Mrs Ross, is titled ‘Household Industry in Tain Previous to 1850’. It shows the two women engaged in traditional female domestic crafts – spinning wool and knitting socks or stockings – which were also practiced commercially to supplement household incomes among the rural poor. Mrs Ross is dressed in the simple clothing of an elderly though well-off Highland cottager, with a frilled and starched linen ‘mutch’ or cap on her head and a practical cotton skirt and shawl. She may have dressed like this on an everyday basis, though as the mother of an accountant her middle class status would suggest otherwise. Miss Ross is fashionably dressed in a plaid silk gown over a crinoline. Despite the drapery in the background, the foliage on the ground suggests that the carefully composed photograph was taken outdoors. Nineteenth century middle class and elite women were commonly represented in paintings and photographs with spinning wheels – and ornate spinning wheels, often antiques, were purchased as household furniture for elite drawing rooms from the 1880s. Processing textiles at home like this, though it was a technology long replaced by factories and machines, expressed an ideal of feminine industriousness – called eydence in Scots – and also evoked romanticised images of cottage life in the past and in the Highlands in particular that held a particular charm for Victorians. Queen Victoria, during her widowhood at Balmoral, was photographed on a number of occasions posed by a similar spinning wheel. Tourist photographs of Highland Scotland commonly featured women seated with wheels outside cottages and they were also displayed in the popular Highland and Irish villages that featured in international exhibitions. Mrs Ross sits by a Saxony wheel, which was widely introduced to Scotland from the mid-eighteenth century as the linen industry evolved, replacing the more portable and primitive distaff system of spinning. The wheel is powered with a foot treadle. Alongside her is a jack reel for winding the yarn. There is a basket on the ground containing balls of wool and finished socks. 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 Mrs and Miss Ross of Tain, spinning and knitting ca. 1865 exhibitions linen spinning textiles tourist industry wool https://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/files/original/333d079b61bcbdfcabe72b873fe2922b.jpg 840b416fb4add6b8b8c43f98e28e299b Exhibition Item Title Embroidered Footstool Category Textiles Description This walnut and inlaid footstool with Berlin wool needlework top was made by John Taylor & Sons, Edinburgh, ca. 1850. It is square, with carved scroll feet and a geometrical coloured inlaid border around the lower edge. The needlework top features a design of a fox head in semi-profile surrounded by winter foliage reminiscent of Victorian Christmas decorations, with a coloured braided cord forming a border on the upper edge. The footstool is stamped underneath with the maker’s mark. An amateur may have made the embroidered top. Footstools existed in the eighteenth century, but the great age for production and use was the nineteenth century, with a peak of newspaper advertising between the 1860s and 1880s. They came in numerous styles, but were typically small wooden objects with an upholstered top covered in fancy textiles often, as in this case, featuring embroidery. Footstools were intended to raise the feet out of draughts and damp floors in houses and churches. They were found in sitting or drawing rooms in spaces usually associated with middle class women. They served various functions in addition to acting as footrest, with contemporary images showing them used as seating for small children or pet dogs and also supporting piles of books and papers. The homemade footstool featuring elaborate and time-consuming embroidery was a display item and often gifted within families. John Taylor & Sons, sometimes styled ‘Cabinetmakers to the Queen’ were founded in Edinburgh in 1825 with premises in West Thistle Street, moving to 109 Princes Street by mid century, where they had extensive retail premises and a workshop and offices behind, and also establishing a more extensive workshop – the Rosemount Cabinetworks – to the west of the city, close to Haymarket railway station. At the Census of 1851, the founder, a wright by training, employed 90 men and four apprentices, one of them his own son who was an apprentice cabinetmaker. John Taylor & Sons designed, made and retailed footstools, possibly employing female needle workers in their premises, or more likely as outworkers, to make the elaborate textile covers, which comprised a large part of the value of the object. They might also have purchased the embroidered tops ready made, since there was significant importing of made panels for sale, mostly produced in Europe and described as ‘German Embroidery.’ This type of needlework, using popular Berlin wool, which was retailed through many premises for home use, was also undertaken by amateur embroiderers and the company catered for this market, as it announced in the Scotsman in 1855 as part of a larger advertisement for their ‘cabinet furniture manufactured in their own works’: J. T. & S. devote great attention to the Making Up of SEWED WORK into CHAIRS, OTTOMANS, CUSHIONS, FENDER and FOOTSTOOLS and they execute Designs specially to suit the WORK. 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 Embroidered Footstool, John Taylor & Sons, ca. 1850 amateur Edinburgh embroiderers middle class needlework textiles women craftworkers