This post is about the furnishings of tower houses, and the documentary record. The first thing to note is that Scottish furnishings from the sixteenth- and seventeenth centuries are very rare. This may be contrasted with the apparent survival of quantities of English chunky Jacobethan furniture, and it occurs to me that a rather smaller…
Kinneil House: The Power of Women
This blog is about the early wall paintings at Kinneil House, West Lothian, Scotland, based on a talk given to the Friends of Kinneil, partly about how they were restored, and came to look as they do today, and about what they may have meant in the sixteenth century. The paintings are a very rare…
Andrew Mansioun: A French woodcarver in sixteenth-century Scotland
Andrew Mansioun is mentioned as a French craftsman in several records from the 1530s until his death in Edinburgh in 1579. He worked on the buildings of James V and fitted out the royal ships, and made the cradle for Mary, Queen of Scots. He probably worked on the carved oak medallions for Stirling Castle…
John Clerk and his Edinburgh retail show home, 1649.
London-made furniture was popular in Scotland. John Gilmour, a rising advocate who prospered and bought Craigmillar Castle at the Restoration, bought eight chairs in London in March 1636. John Campbell, younger laird of Glenorchy had a great bundle of chairs and seven bundles of chair frames shipped from London to Perth in 1657. The wills…
My Own Making: Women and textile production in seventeenth-century Scotland
In July 1676 James, 2nd Marquis of Douglas recorded his use of relatively plain hangings which were now becoming unfashionable, writing to his factor about new hangings for the hall at Douglas Castle. The marquis was ashamed of the old hangings of plain sad coloured (grey or brown) cloth and requested new cloth which would…
Riddle’s Court: the banquet, the renaissance painted ceiling and diplomacy in 1598
James VI explored various opportunities to maintain his via media in Scotland and secure his accession to the throne of England. When Anne of Denmark’s 19 year old brother Ulric, Duke of Holstein, visited Scotland in 1598 it was intended he would depart with a Scottish embassy to Denmark and the Holy Roman Empire. The…
Painters, makers and materials in early modern Scotland
This post is based on a talk for the National Trust for Scotland at Gladstone’s Land Study Day, 11 November 2015, which discussed makers and the materials of the fabric of Gladstone’s Land in Edinburgh. Thomas Gladstones bought the house around 1618, planning to extend the property southward into the Lawnmarket, and use the building…
Craftsmen in the royal accounts
The treasury of James V left an extensive archive with the treasurer’s accounts and exchequer rolls. In addition there are two series of household books and inventories of household goods. Much of the building work on royal palaces is also well documented, with the survival of volumes produced for audit by the Master of Work,…
At Coldingham Abbey in 1592
In 1890 William Fraser recorded a household and teind income account book for Coldingham Abbey in 1592. Fraser noted the physical condition of the booklet as 'partly decayed' or 'much mutilated at the beginning'. He printed a brief summary of the contents and the historical background, and while 'none of the entries contain special historic…
The Earl of Dunfermline’s purse
My PhD research Vanished Comforts: Setting the Context for Furniture and Furnishings in Scotland, 1500-1650, was an AHRC-funded project involving National Museums Scotland and the University of Dundee, running from 2012 to 2016. The purpose of the research was to imagine and understand the use and purpose of rooms and planning in Scottish homes and…
Objects and the archive 