Umbrella Stand, Carron Company, 1843

This ink on paper design shows the shape and details of the cast-iron umbrella stand copyright registered by Carron Company at 75 Upper Thames Street, London and with works at Carron Stirlingshire, Scotland, on February 24^th 1843.  The design, which is typical of mid-Victorian taste, is highly decorative and shows the intricate moulding capabilities of the iron-casting process comprising a symmetrical arrangement of adjoining c-scrolls and almost no straight lines. It was one of over thirty-five designs registered by Carron Company between 1843 and 1863.

Carron Company was the first large-scale cast-iron smelting company in Scotland.  Founded in 1759 on the banks of the River Carron it was established as a large-scale manufactory, with ammunition, architectural ironwork and decorative domestic wares all included in its early production.  Emphasis on good design was a significant factor in Carron’s early success. In the 1770s the Scottish architects, Robert, James and John Adam became shareholders in the business, influencing the style of its decorative work and representing the firm’s commercial interests in London. Under their influence Carron supplied the beautiful, classical-style cast-iron ranges and decorative grates for which the company became renowned, many of these can still be found in the private and public rooms of country and town houses in London and Scotland. Carron’s Adam-styled ironwork can also still be seen in the balconies and railings of Edinburgh’s New Town. 

Carron Company was formed as a joint endeavour between chemical manufacturer John Roebuck, Birmingham businessman Samuel Garbett, and William Cadell who was an ironmaster, shipowner and merchant of Cockenzie.  In its early years it was dependent on the skills and knowledge of a workforce brought from the iron district of Coalbrookdale in Shropshire, but its expansion allowed investment in local skills and new smelting technologies. By the late eighteenth-century Carron was fully exploiting Falkirk’s resources of iron-ore and labour. 

Carron promoted its goods through exhibition displays and advertising catalogues. The exhibition catalogue of the 1862 International Exhibition in London features an illustration of an ornate parlour register stove and details of Carron’s London showroom at 15 Upper Thames Street and its warehouses at 30 Red Cross Street Liverpool and 123 Buchanen Street, Glasgow. The diversity of goods manufactured can be seen in a catalogue produced by the firm in the early 1880s, which illustrates ornamental goods for domestic wares including umbrella stands, garden seats, clothes posts and kitchen ovens.  Other sections of the catalogue show illustrations for the firm’s domestic and industrial sanitary fittings including stoves for shops and ships, palm-oil boilers and other export specialities. 

By the mid nineteenth-century a number of prominent and reputable iron-foundries were operating in the Falkirk area many established on the back of Carron’s early endeavour.  The Phoenix Foundry (est.1802) and The Falkirk Iron Company (est.1819) were just two of the rival foundries founded by men previously connected to Carron Company.