My PhD research ‘Vanished Comforts: Setting the Context for Furniture and Furnishings in Scotland, 1500-1650’, was an AHRC-funded CDP project with the National Museums of Scotland and the University of Dundee, from 2012 to 2016.

The purpose of the research is to imagine and understand the use and purpose of rooms and planning in Scottish homes and castles in this period, and so the lives of those who used these buildings, from the evidence of surviving objects and buildings, archival records, and narratives with a spatial component.

These posts reflect continuing research in early modern material culture attempting to understand activities in early modern homes, furnishings, costume and jewelry, the roles of servants, and networks of patrons and makers.

See my PhD thesis here ‘Vanished Comforts’ at Dundee Discovery

Michael Pearce

Research papers here

A transcript of Mary of Guise’s 1553 wardrobe account NRS E34/19 and household roll

Memoir of William Douglas of Lochleven, 1559-1585, National Records of Scotland GD150/2234

Friar Mark’s History of the Hamiltons, National Library of Scotland Adv. MS 34.4.5

 

Articles and research on other sites

Historic Environment Scotland: The 1640 Inventory of Caerlaverock (HES, 2026).

Historic Environment Scotland: The dolls of Mary Queen of Scots (HES, 2019).

 

Letters from the Countess of Westmorland to Grace Fane, Countess of Home

A debate on French marriages for James VI of Scotland, c. 1583

“Anna of Denmark: Fashioning a Danish Court in Scotland” The Court Historian, 24:2 (August 2019).

The seventeenth-century gardens of Moray House Edinburgh

Sixteenth-century furniture makers in Edinburgh 

Edinburgh Castle Research: The jewels of Mary Queen of Scots

Beds of “chapel” form in sixteenth-century inventories

Interpreting Scottish household inventories