Design History Society Student Travel Award Report Sarah Laurenson

12 February 2016 -

With the support of the Design History Society Student Travel Award, I recently went on a journey in search of surviving jewellery artefacts made in Scotland during the nineteenth century. My PhD research explores the jewellery craft in Scotland from 1780 to 1914, tracing the transformation of raw materials in the landscape to finished objects worn on the body. The study draws on surviving artefacts to understand how Scotland’s jewellery craft evolved during a time of profound economic, social and cultural change, with a focus on the shifting intersections between design and workmanship.

There are two things that make Scotland’s jewellery craft a particularly rich area for historical research. First, Scotland has a long history of quality craft production, particularly in silverware, which was important in passing down skills in metalwork and in shaping the image and reputation of the country’s jewellery trade. Secondly, Scotland’s geological diversity has provided jewellers with materials – precious metals, crystals, pearls and gems – for centuries. History and geology were central to the stories many nineteenth-century jewellers told of their craft: as one descended from an ancient past, and rooted in ideas of landscape.

The first part of the journey took me north from Edinburgh to the Scottish Highlands, first to Inverness Museum and Art Gallery, then up the north-east coast to Tain Museum, on to Dunrobin Castle in Golspie and finally to Timespan in Helmsdale. I saw and handled many jewellery artefacts made by local craftsmen, examining each one for evidence of how ideas and technical skill were combined within the finished object. I discovered a scrapbook belonging to a nineteenth-century Inverness jeweller that reveals how he sketched antiques and took rubbings from archaeological finds, then adapted them to create new products. This volume of rare and fragmentary records has become central to my analysis of how Scottish jewellery design evolved over time as jewellers fused old and new to suit the desires of each generation.


Kildonan burn at Baile an Or, near Helmsdale, where the gold rush activities of 1869 were located. © Sarah Laurenson



While up north, I explored the remote area that was the centre of the Scottish gold rush in the 1860s. It is clear from advertisements and documentary sources that jewellery made from this gold was popular with tourists to the Highlands, and that there was international demand. Walking the burns where the gold was recovered, I followed the path of the raw materials from their origins in the hills into the nearest village of Helmsdale, from where the metals were sent on to Inverness, Glasgow, Edinburgh and London to be formed into objects. Along the way, I viewed two exceptionally rare jewellery artefacts crafted from native gold at the height of the rush: a small wooden brooch inlaid with a tiny amount of gold, and a huge ancestral pendant combining gold with local pearls and elaborate Celtic-style engraved decoration. Together, these objects tell of how the origins of the materials carried an emotional resonance for local people of all classes.

Phoebe Anna Traquair, Gold and enamel necklace depicting a mermaid, 1905. © Victoria & Albert Museum, London.



The next stop was London, with research visits to the V&A Museum and The National Archives in Kew. At the V&A, I saw a range of exceptional objects including pieces by Phoebe Anna Traquair, who produced enamel jewellery in collaboration with Edinburgh firms. At The National Archives, I spent several days researching the work of Scotland’s jewellers patented in the Design Registers. Many of these copyrighted designs were historicist in nature, while others were copied directly from archaeological objects. Like the working sketches found up north, these designs reveal objects in which old and new ideas were entangled with stories of pas, place and landscape.

On my return to Edinburgh, I realised that I had not only seen a wide range of rich source material, but had inadvertently followed the path of the materials and objects themselves. Having travelled across one of the most mineral rich areas of the Highlands, through Scotland’s urban centres and back and forth to London, I have developed a deeper understanding of the ways in which the movement of ideas, materials and labour impacted on the design and making of nineteenth-century jewellery.

I would like to thank the Design History Society for making these trips possible. I am grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for funding my doctoral research as part of the project titled ‘Artisans and the craft economy in Scotland, c. 1780 -1914’ at the School of History, Classics and Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh. Thanks are also due to the owners, keepers and curators who provided access to the material I discovered on my travels.