The Value of Craftwork in a Nineteenth Century Industrialised Economy: The
Scottish Case1
Stana Nenadic
Introduction
My research into the craft economy starts with the premise that far from disappearing
with the rise of machine production, handwork survived, evolved creatively and
thrived in various ways throughout the period under consideration and beyond. The
project2 from which this presentation is derived considers Scotland, putting the
country in a broader British and European context. It explores sectoral and business
case studies and includes a survey of craft design, exhibition and retail. This paper
examines the character and value of craft production in a modernized industrial
economy, focussing on two sectors producing luxury goods for personal consumption
– glass and silverware - where handwork and machine work co-existed in a complex
relationship. The approach that underpins the research embraces the materiality of
manufactured goods relative to craft skill, considering, for instance, the haptic and
visual contemporary meaning of hand-made goods.3 It is also founded on a
consideration of the cultural and market value that craft skill represented. 4 By ‘craft
value’ what I mean is a consideration of financial value as a function of material costs
and labour input (both design and production); but also the aesthetic and cultural
value that is accorded to various forms of manufacture where there was a complex
interaction between the evidence contained in goods and made apparent to consumers,
that they were a product of the ‘hand’ or of the ‘machine’, or of both, and that
manufacturers could choose to highlight one over the other to meet market
expectations.5
Flexible Specialisation and Key Craft Skills
My interest in this subject started not with a consideration of craft production as such
but with research into one of the advanced areas of nineteenth-century Scottish
industrial production – the Turkey red printed cotton textile industry. Turkey red
1
The paper refers throughout to images that will be shown in the conference presentation but
cannot be included here due to copyright restrictions.
2
This paper arises from a current Leverhulme-funded project titled ‘Artisans and the Craft
Economy in Scotland c.1780-1914’ (RPG-2012-247). For further details see the project
website at –
https://artisansinscotland.wordpress.com/
3
See, Kate Smith, ‘Sensing design and workmanship: The haptic skills of shoppers in
eighteenth-century London.’ Journal of Design History, 25.1 (2012) 1-10.
4
Kenneth Lipartito, ‘Connecting the cultural and the material in business history.’ Enterprise
and Society, 14 (2013) 686-704.
5
See, George H. Marcus, ‘Disavowing craft at the Bauhaus: Hiding the hand to suggest
machine manufacture.’ Journal of Modern Craft, 1.3 (2008) 345-56.
1
dyeing and printing, based on mass machine manufacture of cheap cotton textiles and
sophisticated dyeing technologies undertaken in large workplace units never-the-less,
throughout the years when it flourished in Scotland and northwest England from
c.1820 to the 1880s, employed many craft workers in print block cutting and factorybased printing and also employed designers, who normally had close connections
with craft-trained production.6 A similar combination of craft and machine work was
found in linen tableware production throughout the nineteenth century and in later
design-based industries such as linoleum making. The skilled craft workers involved
in these industries – who were mostly apprenticeship and/or design school trained
and predominantly men - were sometimes employed by the factory-led enterprise;
sometimes they were self-employed and in other cases they worked for smaller firms,
often family based and including women, doing a mix of sub-contracting and their
own specialist production.
Behind this pattern of hybrid working were multiple phenomena acting in parallel.
There were technical lags that meant that some areas of industrial production were
mechanised before others. Also a cultural valuing of craft input, often associated with
elite notions of the past and the moral superiority of hand over machine, which can be
seen in numerous contexts long before the later nineteenth century Arts and Crafts
movement gave handwork a ‘soul’. There was also the inevitable dynamic of a
rational process of economic utility that has been called ‘flexible specialisation’,
which, according to Sabel and others,7 argues that the co-existence of hand and
machine is conducive to a certain level efficiency particularly when industrial
production is localized, a phenomenon that has, of course, been subject to a number of
detailed urban studies.8 Linked to the idea of flexible specialisation is another useful
term for understanding the role of craft in the nineteenth century that might be termed
the ‘key skill’ component in any business or area of production. Key skills and the
associated niche trades that these generated, were shaped by some of the broader
dynamics of the mainly localised economy, as the Appendix shows through a
comparison of Edinburgh and Glasgow in 1841 and 1911.
6
Stana Nenadic and Sally Tuckett, Colouring the Nation. The Turkey Red Printed Cotton
Industry in Scotland c. 1840-1940 (Edinburgh, 2013); Stana Nenadic, ‘Designers in the
nineteenth-century Scottish fancy textile industry: Education, employment and exhibition.’
Journal of Design History, 27.2 (2014) 115-131.
Charles Sabel and Jonathan Zeitlin, ‘Historical alternatives to mass production: Politics,
markets and technology in nineteenth-century industrialization.’ Past and Present, 108 (1985)
133-76.
8
Francesca Carnevali, ‘Golden opportunities: Jewellery making in Birmingham between
mass production and speciality.’ Enterprise & Society, 4 (2003) 272–98; Francesca Carnevali,
‘”Crooks, thieves and receivers”: Transaction costs in nineteenth century industrial
Birmingham.’ Economic History Review, 57 (2004) 533-50. Geoffrey Tweedale, ‘Backstreet
capitalism: An analysis of the family firm in the nineteenth-century Sheffield cutlery
industry.’ Business History, 55 (2013) 875-91. For the food industry see, Richard Blundelr
and Angela Tregear, ‘From artisans to “factories”: The interpenetration of craft and industry
in English cheese-making, 1650-1950.’ Enterprise and Society, 7 (2006) 705-39.
7
2
An illustration of the idea of ‘key skills’ as a mechanism underlying continuities in
craft production can be best understood through taking a close look at some of the
objects that were produced and considering the character and supply of individual
components in the manufacture of what are often complex commodities. An example
is provided by the production and sale of fancy leather and wood travelling cases,
with interiors made up of individual components in glass, silver, ivory or tortoise
shell, along with ceramic and paste elements, which was a niche trade in Edinburgh
and in other cities associated with a large elite or tourist market. (See Appendix)
The genesis of companies who produced such goods could be complex and varied. In
Edinburgh, for instance, there was the firm of W. & J. Milne of 126 Princes Street (in
business from 1844 to c.1905) who were celebrated ‘box makers’ in fancy wood,
leather and ivory and registered patents for some of their products.9 They had a key
craft skill developed over several generations of family involvement in leather as
book bindings and for pocket book making and therefore focused their own workshop
activities in these areas, buying in components such as glass or silverwares from other
suppliers. Another firm producing similar high quality boxes, but with a different key
craft and material at the heart of the enterprise, was that of Thomas Johnston of 42
Hanover Street who advertised in the 1830s/40s and were best known as ‘diamond
paste and razor strop manufacturers’. Their portable dressing cases were mainly
aimed at male customers and were described as particularly suited ‘To the Tourist and
the Angler’, which ‘contains all that is requisite for comfortable shaving’.10 Another
firm, advertising similar goods in the 1850s, such as ‘Ladies and Gentleman’s
Travelling Dressing Cases’ along with ‘Travelling and Tourists Writing Cases, Flasks
and Sandwich Boxes’, was that of J. Stephenson of 13 Leith Street Edinburgh, who
were ‘Comb Manufacturers to Her Majesty’.11 Combs were made of ivory or
tortoiseshell. The firm of Wilson, Walker & Co. of Leeds, who also made dressing
cases, came at this from a different direction. The item illustrated here [Image] was
exhibited at the 1851 Great Exhibition, where they were prize winners, but their stand
in Class 16 ‘Leather, Saddlery, Boots and Shoes’ mainly comprised worked leather
and certain industrial applications such as ‘coloured sheep-leather skivers; coloured
roans; roller leather for silk and cotton spinning; chamois, or wash leather, coloured
calf and morocco.’12 They were predominantly leather processors and carvers, taking
supplies of tanned hides from the big tannery centres such as Bermondsey in London
and selling on to specialist leather goods makers like W. & J. Milne in Edinburgh.
9
National Archives. Registered Design no. 17619. Class 3: Wood, bone, ivory etc. 25
November 1884. ‘Protection sought for the shape of the bowl and the pattern thereon.’ W. and
J. Milne, Dressing Case Makers.
10
Scotsman, Aug. 3 1833.
11 Edinburgh Post Office Directory
12
Official Catalogue of the Great Exhibition of Works of Industry of all Nations (1851) 86.
Wilson, Walker & Co. of the Sheepscar Leather Works (sometimes called the Spanish
Leather Works) was founded c. 1825 and continued into the 20th century.
3
Silverware
Silverware production was transformed c.1820 with increases in the supply of silver
from the Americas and Australia, reducing costs and allowing expansion into the
growing middle class market.13 In the silver making and retail sector, where the cities
of Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen maintained an array of highly esteemed
silversmith businesses, it was never-the-less commonplace to source some of their
products for retail sale along with some of the components for their own manufacture
(and even their special commissions to their own design) through London suppliers
with bigger workshop production such as the firm of Edward Barnard & Sons. The
extant papers for the latter in the V&A Archive of Art and Design, covering the years
of production from 1805 to the 1960s, provide a remarkable insight to the presence in
London of buyers for Scottish craft-based firms, such as Marshall & Sons of
Edinburgh, who placed orders worth c. £200 annually in first few decades of the
nineteenth century.14 By the later nineteenth century, Barnard’s provincial customers
were serviced by a small group of specialised travelling agents who recorded details
of orders placed.15 Wage and worker records for this firm, along with copious details
of product lines and designs, provide an invaluable perspective on a craft sector that
operated through networks of production and supply. At the main workshop in
London they employed c.60 men and four apprentices in the later nineteenth
century.16 A Birmingham factory was acquired in the interwar years. Barnard’s stock
books, which cover the years from 1828-1904, providing details of the object supplied
and client name, allow an additional insight to the changing ranges, names and
designs of silver wares. Most of their customers with retail outlets were also
manufacturers to their own designs, usually keeping workshops with about eight
craft-trained employees plus one or two apprentices. Across the nineteenth century
the largest categories of silver product by volume of output were teapots and
candlesticks, but Barnard & Sons made a great range of other types of goods from
flatware to table centrepieces. They also supplied their provincial customers, who
were mostly makers who also kept retail premises, with castings (using sand-casting
technique) to be incorporated into other larger objects.
Provincial companies also made castings, as well as teapots or candlesticks and
developed their own specialised lines and skill sets. They made flatware too, though
the profit to be gained from spoons or forks was much reduced by London machine
production by the 1870s and this area of the trade was slowly relinquished amongst
Keir Reeves, et al., ‘Integrating the historiography of the nineteenth-century gold rushes.’
Australian Economic History Review, 50 (2010) 111-28.
14
V&A Archives. AAD/1988/5/14/540.
15
V&A Archives, AAD/2008/8/19.
16
V&A Archives, AAD/1988/5/244
13
4
craft based producers.17 A typical provincial firm was that Robert Gray & Sons of
Glasgow, who were customers of Edward Barnard & Sons in the first half of the
nineteenth century. Robert Gray (1755-1829) is regarded as one of Scotland’s finest
silver makers, with workshop and retail premises in Glasgow’s Trongate from c. 1776
and a broad output that included flatware, candlesticks, presentation cups and plates
and the ubiquitous silver tea service. At the time that this teapot was made [IMAGE]
the firm was managed by William Gray (1781-1850), son of the founder who was
apprentice trained by his father from 1794-1802. Robert Gray & Son trained a
generation of fine silversmiths, many emigrating overseas, including Robert Hendery
of Montreal, who completed his apprenticeship in 1837 and was in business in
Canada by 1841.18
The illustrated Gray-made silver teapot is of fashionable design with additional
applied and engraved detail that identifies it as a sporting trophy.19 The top, handle
and spout are decorated with a swirling foliate and floral rococo-styled pattern.
The present owner, the National Museum of Scotland, has another silver harecoursing trophy in its collection, made by the same firm in 1823, this time in the form
of a circular footed basked with handle decorated with a cast band of vine leaves and
grapes on the inner edge, bearing the same cast motif of two greyhounds and hare and
engraved detail of the prize winner. These wares, the teapot and the basket, were also
made without the additional decoration for domestic customers. The gadroon motif
on the base and upper rim of the teapot was commonly found on the edges of
furniture as well as silver ware of the period and is of neo-classical inspiration, though
the piece as a whole is of a hybrid design. A base like this could be used for a wide
variety items in the product range.
Robert Gray & Son made presentations pieces and also decorated silverwares made
by other firms. Indeed, they had a specialist skill in fine engraving, as described in
October 1825 when they engraved the elaborate dedication and coats of arms for ‘an
elegant silver epergne and richly chased silver salver, value 160 guineas’ made by
Mitchel & Sons, another Glasgow firm, for presentation to the Scottish M.P. Joseph
Hume, by ‘the Operative Colliers of Lanark, Dumbarton, and Renfrewshire’ to mark
their ‘sincere regard for his faithful and able public service in Parliament’ and his
17
David Bremner, The Industries of Scotland. Their Rise, Progress and Present Condition
(Edinburgh, 1869) 125.
18
Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Hendery, Robert (1814-1897). Hendery was
particularly known for his presentation silver. See also, Ross Fox, ‘Design, presentation
silver and Louis-Victor Freret (1801-1879) in London and Montreal.’ Material Culture
Review, 67 (2008).
19
The Ardrossan Coursing Club, for which this teapot was made, ran its hounds over Lord
Eglinton’s lands in the vicinity of the Ayrshire town of Ardrossan. Hare coursing was a
popular blood sport amongst rural elites and presentation cups or other silver items, including
silver dog collars, were awarded as prizes. Andrew Brown Esq of Thornhill near Stewarton
in Ayrshire, whose name as winner is engraved on the teapot along with the name of his dog
‘Loo’, was a gentleman farmer
5
‘successful exertions to ameliorate the conditions and to defend the interests of the
operative classes.’20 Although this particular firm ceased trading in the 1850s after
the death of the second-generation owner, the craft-based silver plate and jewellery
sector expanded in Scotland in the second half of the century, with an estimated two
thousand employees by 1870, mainly in Edinburgh. According to a well-informed
observer For a number of years past the silversmith and jeweller trades have been
extending in Edinburgh, and there are upwards of thirty master jewellers in the
city, who employ from half a dozen to thirty men each. All of the work done
is of a superior kind, no attempt being made to vie with Birmingham in the
production of cheap and showy articles…The city is not likely to become a
manufacturing centre in the common meaning of the term, nor in some
respects would that be desirable. It is, however, well adapted to become a seat
of light, artistic occupations and many such are carried on in it.21
Glassware
The gold, silver plate and glass displays at the Paris International Exhibition of 1867
provide an insight to the relationship between contemporary industrial and craft
production and to the ways that the foregrounding of craft-made goods could bring
prestige and value to mass produced goods. [Image] The illustration shows elaborate
cut glass lighting, specifically a chandelier, in the display mounted by glass
manufacturer J. Dobson of St James’s Street, London ‘under the practical and artistic
direction of Mr Pearce – who has done so much to improve the character of
decorative glass….The cut glass of this house is thoroughly crystalline in design, and
the execution of the work very admirable.’22 Daniel Pearce (1817-1907), who trained
at the Somerset House design school, set up in the glass trade with Dobson in 1845. 23
Sometimes styled ‘artists in glass to the Queen’ they displayed the famous engraved
glass and gold ‘Morrison Tazza’ in the London exhibition of 1862.24 Pearce formed a
new partnership of Phillips and Pearce of Bond Street in the mid-1860s mainly
designing tableware, centrepieces and chandeliers, which were manufactured by a
20
Caledonian Mercury, Oct. 10, 1825.
Bremner, Industries of Scotland, 131.
22
George Wallis, ‘The glass: Domestic and decorative.’ The Illustrated Catalogue of the
Universal Exhibition, Published with the Art Journal (1867) p. 90-91
23
Illustrated Catalogue of the International Exhibition of 1862, (1862) Class XXXIV, Glass,
for Decorative and Household Purposes, 790. The firm is described as ‘designers and
manufacturers of first-class ornamental and useful household glass-work, in lustres, dinner
and dessert services, gaseliers, candelabra, and flower glasses; sole manufacturers of Mr.
March's much-admired flower stands (registered), for which the Special First Prize was
awarded, at the Royal Horticultural Society's exhibitions of 1861 and 1862, for dinner and
drawing-room decoration.’
24
‘The most extraordinary specimen of art manufacture of its kind in the whole Exhibition.’
Times, May 17, 1862.
21
6
sub-contractor in Stourbridge.25 These spectacular exhibition pieces, like the tazza or
chandelier were intended to generate interest and prestige for the businesses
concerned, though their profits came from more pedestrian product lines.
Scotland had a strong glass making sector in Edinburgh, mainly producing bottle
glass and flint glass, the latter involving large numbers of craft-trained employees.
The Holyrood Glass Company (in business from 1812-1904),26 with factory premises
and warerooms at the South Back of Canongate and a shop in central Edinburgh, was
one of several notable glass making firms. In 1868 it employed over two hundred
men and maintained a successful factory production of pressed and blown table wares
and lamps alongside higher end craft output, with a group of about forty skilled
engravers or glasscutters and apprentices employed in this part of the company. The
owner mid century, John Ford, who succeeded an uncle, was apprentice trained as a
glasscutter, making a cut glass fruit bowl on a stand ‘in the Irish taste’ as his
apprenticeship piece.27
The success of the business, which eventually came to be known as the Royal
Holyrood Glass Co., was based on marketing and product image developed around
royal associations and the conspicuous display of a craft-based output. This image
shows a cut glass epergne in forty separate pieces, about a meter in height that was
made by the company between 1840 and 1842 to mark the accession of Queen
Victoria. An epergne was a glittering centrepiece for a dinner table and was often the
largest and most valuable item of tableware on display. They were made of silver or
glass or both, in multiple pieces, often embellished with coats of arms. Epergnes
were sometimes made as wedding gifts or as commemorative presentation pieces.
They were popular in the eighteenth century when they normally included bowls for
food and also typically held candles. In the nineteenth century, with changes in the
way that meals were served and the introduction of oil lamps, the epergne was either
entirely decorative or held flower arrangements. This particular epergne was made for
a royal table setting and was used on state occasions at Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh.
It was also displayed at the international exhibition displays that were mounted by the
company, as in Edinburgh in 1886, and occasionally in the company head quarters.
The Holyrood glass epergne represents a spectacular display of craftsmanship and
ingenious design, with numerous cut glass elements in the eight separate bowls and
on the upper section, which is topped with a glass replica of a crown and a Maltese
cross. Richard Hunter, foreman glasscutter, made and probably also designed the
piece, taking two years to complete it. The company was know for table pieces with a
high craft input, including their specialist lines in cut glass lamps, some decorated
25
British Museum Catalogue Entry, Museum Number 1999.0309.1: Glass urn and stand.
Curator’s comments.
26
Scotsman, March 15 1905 – Advertisement of works for sale.
27
Now in the collections of the City of Edinburgh Museums. The business is described in
detail in Bremner, Industries of Scotland, ch. 19 ‘Manufactures in Glass.’
7
with ceramic cameos and brass fixings. Other items were made for royal customers
including a cut glass toilet service for Princess Beatrice in 1897, describe in
newspapers as intended for Balmoral but also on show at the company’s retail
premises at 39 Princess Street Edinburgh for a week prior to dispatch.28
In addition to its own craft employees, the Holyrood Glass Company maintained a
strong relationship with the glass-engraving workshop of J. Miller & Co., which was
founded in the 1850s by a Bohemian entrepreneur with a Bohemian craft workforce.29
The Bohemian glass engravers lived and worked in close proximity to the several
glass works in the Abbeyhill district of Edinburgh and were attracted to Scotland (as
well as other parts of Britain) by higher wages than were possible at home.30 John
Millar displayed a distinctive series of fern-engraved glass tableware at the 1862
International Exhibition in London, thereafter influencing design development in
Scotland.31 Another notable Bohemian engraver was Emaunel Lerche, who arrived in
Edinburgh in 1853, moved to Glasgow in 1873 and then worked for W. & J. A.
Bailey of the Alloa Pottery in Clackmannanshire. Members and descendants of the
same craft community worked extensively in the east of Scotland ceramics industry
from the later nineteenth century through to the 1930s, including Karel Nekola, the
principal designer and decorator for the Wemyss ware pottery factory in Fife, owned
by Robert Heron & Son, a long established ceramics business. 32 Such communities
of craft workers were distinct. They were physically mobile and due to high earnings
could travel to exhibitions or back and forth to their places of origin. They sustained
networks of craft production and supply between locations as well as cultures of craft
identity and design influence on which the prestige of their outputs relied.33 The
Scotland-settled Bohemian glass engravers were not unique. Indeed, there were
localised craft communities elsewhere who drew on British as well as European
regional identities. One of the most striking was the community of several hundred
Welsh craftsmen in the building trades who settled in Argyllshire in the 1880s and
1890s to undertake the restoration of Mount Stuart for the Marquess of Bute. These
workmen were part of the ‘Bute Workshops’ created from the 1870s for the
restoration of Cardiff Castle under the direction of architect William Burges.34 Whilst
based in Scotland, they also undertook special commissions for the restoration of
28
Edinburgh Evening News, Oct. 6 1897.
The relationships between these companies, and the exhibition work of the latter is
described in detail in Bremner, Industries of Scotland, 361-74.
30
Scotsman, Aug. 8, 1866.
31 For further details see, https://artisansinscotland.wordpress.com/2015/09/03/septemberfern-ware/
32
P. H. Davies and R. Rankine, Wemyss Ware: A Decorative Scottish Pottery (Edinburgh,
1986).
33
For a similar group see, Ken Fones-Wolf, ‘Transatlantic craft migrations and transnational
spaces: Belgian window glass workers in America, 1880-1920.’ Labor History, 45 (2004)
299-321.
34
Western Mail, ‘Cardiff Castle Past and Present’. July 29, 1874; Western Mail, ‘Cardiff
Castle.’ March 20, 1874
29
8
Bute-owned properties in Fife. The money to pay for all of this came from Bute’s
great fortune amassed from Welsh coal and the Cardiff docks.35
Conclusion
The relationship between bigger industrial undertakings and the maintenance and
support of the craft sector either within the context of the commercial unit itself or as
separate but connected businesses has been explored here as a largely positive
phenomena, reflective of a cultural value placed on handwork and the synthesis of
interests within manufacturing sectors that saw hand and machine and complex
processes of sub-contacting and supplying combined in the interests of business
success. This presentation has not sought to explore the impact of business
organization on craft workers themselves. On the one hand it is clear from
contemporary trade organization activity and from conspicuous individual
engagement in design school training and artisans exhibitions (as both paid craft
workers and as amateurs) that ordinary men and women placed a high value on
participation in craftwork.36 Yet the complex subcontracting processes that this
entailed, particularly in London – though, as we have seen, this extended into the
provinces in sectors like silverware - also seem to have generated intense competition
and pressure on wages. 37
Of course, the sectors explored here are all associated with personal consumption and
with the application, to a greater or lesser extent, of design, good taste and ingenuity
in the production of luxury goods. It is here that one might expect to see the highest
value placed on craftwork and the greatest continuity in the presence of craft workers.
Yet across the century, in both Edinburgh and Glasgow, as is shown in the Appendix,
but also in rural areas of Scotland, there was a growing presence of craft producers
and the niche trades to which they were linked. And although the shape of the craft
sector differed significantly between the two cities, both sustained a vibrant craft
economy and provided the infrastructure through design schools and exhibition events
to support and celebrate the presence of craft workers – a phenomenon that was also
seen in small towns and predominantly rural areas.38 As mentioned at the outset, even
those areas of industrial production where the machine and factory-scale production
dominated, as in the Turkey red cotton printing industry, contained within them
specialist sub-areas or processes where craft workers played a key role. And sectors
that were entirely industrial in their production processes commonly sought to add a
craft dimension for the associated prestige and spectacle. Take, for example, the coal
35
Rosemary Hannah, The Grand Designer. Third Marquess of Bute (Edinburgh, 2013).
See, for instance, such local events as…in Glasgow which paralleled the ‘great’ exhibition
movement. – add detail.
37
Giorgio Riello, ‘Boundless competition: Subcontracting and the London economy in the
late nineteenth century.’ Enterprise and Society, 13 (2012) 504-537.
38 See, Stana Nenadic and Sally Tuckett, ‘Artisans and aristocrats in nineteenth century
Scotland.’ Scottish Historical Review, 2016 forthcoming.
36
9
gas industry in Fife, which was a county of small industrial towns long associated
with high quality linen and ceramic craftwork, which may well have shaped a
localized culture of value associated with craft identities. The Fife coal gas industry,
largely located on the estates of the Earl of Wemyss, was based on locally mined
Parrot coal. This type of coal can be carved and polished like soft black marble and
numerous objects, furniture in particular, were made from Parrot coal for the Earl of
Wemyss or for the Fife Coal Co., mostly by Fife stonemasons (not cabinetmakers,
since the usual range of furniture making techniques could not be applied to such
materials) and intended for exhibition and various forms of public display in
noblemen’s houses and company headquarters.39 Why did they do this? Partly it was
for the novelty and partly it was because the routine output of the company concerned
lacked visual interest or appeal and being engaged in exhibition was a business
necessity. But it was also, I would suggest, because of a cultural imperative to present
materials associated with utilitarian industrial production as being capable of
possessing the humanity, the ingenuity and the ‘glamour’ of craftwork.
Stana Nenadic
Professor of Social and Cultural History
University of Edinburgh
School of History, Classics and Archaeology
21 February 2016
39
David Jones, ‘Coal furniture in Scotland.’ Furniture History, 23 (1987) 35-38.
10
APPENDIX
Key Trades and Niche Trades: Edinburgh and Glasgow Compared, 1841 & 1911
A representative sample of key trades extracted from the annual Post Office
Directories for 1841 and 1911 illustrate that Edinburgh and Glasgow were cities with
different craft characteristics, but both possessed an ever-evolving constellation of
key trades and niche trades.
At both dates Glasgow had more individual firms listed than Edinburgh in every trade
except Coach Makers (1841), Cabinetmakers (1841 and 1911), Carvers and Gilders
(1841), Bookbinders (1841), Engravers and Printers (1841 and 1911), Hatters (1841),
Pocketbook and Jewel Case Makers (1911). The greater numbers of Cabinetmakers,
Engravers and Printers, and Pocketbook and Jewel Case Makers in Edinburgh in 1911
are indicative of its enduring consumer market for luxury goods.
Glasgow’s consistently greater numbers of Smiths, Tinplate Workers, Boot and
Shoemakers, Hosiers and Glovers, and Tailor and Clothiers is indicative of its larger
population - although clothing was not necessarily made only or primarily for local
consumption – and its greater industrialisation. In 1841 and 1911 both cities had a
range of niche trades, which supplied tools, services and components for larger trades,
e.g. Flower-lashers and Beamers (1841) and Glass Benders (1911) in Glasgow. The
numbers of firms working in niche trades is statistically small but their presence in the
directories offers a nuanced understanding of the trade activities of each city and the
relationship between craft and industrial producers.
Metals, Machines,
Implements and
Conveyances
Smiths
Gun Makers
Tinplate Workers
Cutlers
Coachmakers /
Builders

Edinburgh
1841
Glasgow
1841
Edinburgh
1911
Glasgow
1911
80
8
18
12
15
97
9
51
14
9
105
10
40
24
21
163
13
115
42
27
Niche trades in Edinburgh 1841: Die and Stamp Cutters (for coin or
medals), Bridle, Bit and Spur Makers. The category for Smiths includes
‘Farriers and Winding-up Jack Makers’
11



Niche trades in Glasgow 1841: Edge Tool Makers, File Cutters, Plane
Makers, Weaver’s Utensil Makers, Lock and Hinge Makers, Safety Lamp
Makers.
Niche trades in Edinburgh, 1911: Baby Carriage and Mail-cart
Manufacturers, Art Metal Workers, Aeroplane Builders.
Niche trades in Glasgow, 1911: Brass Window Manufacturers for Drapers,
Jewellers &c, Bellfounders, Iron and Armoured Fireproof Door Makers,
Spring Mattress Manufacturers, Hollow-ware Manufacturers.
Wood, Furniture,
Fittings and
Decorations
Cabinetmakers
Coopers
Carvers and Gilders
Venetian Blind
Makers
Turners




Edinburgh 1841
Glasgow
1841
Edinburgh
1911
Glasgow
1911
91
29
22
4
39
26
15
5
269
21
24
13
216
41
54
13
12
26
10
29
Niche trades in Edinburgh, 1841: Chair-Masters.
Niche trades in Glasgow, 1841: Veneer Cutters and Merchants, Bed
Furniture Glazers, Shuttle Makers, Bamboo and Stained Furniture Makers
Niche trades in Edinburgh, 1911: Enamelled Copper Letter Makers, Trunk
and Portmanteau Makers, Wood Letter Cutters.
Niche trades in Glasgow, 1911: Boot and Shoe Sample Case Makers, Bazaar
and Ballroom Decorators, Cistern Makers (Wood and lead-lined).
Edinburgh
Paper, Prints, Books Edinburgh 1841
Glasgow
Glasgow
1911
and Stationery
1841
1911
Bookbinders
33
46
26
91
Engravers and
48
82
40
72
Printers
 Niche Trades in Edinburgh, 1841: Printer’s Joiners, Printing and Copypress
Maker
 Niche Trades Glasgow, 1841: Bandbox Makers, Black Borderers.
 Niche trades in Edinburgh, 1911: Card Makers (bevel edge and fancy).
 Niche trades in Glasgow, 1911: Card Makers (gift and jacquard), Black
Borderers.
12
Edinburgh
1841
175
24
Dress
Glasgow
1841
178
20
Edinburgh
1911
209
78
Glasgow
1911
291
88
Boot and Shoemakers
Hatters / Hat
Manufacturers
Hosiers and Glovers
3*
114
68
170
Tailors and Clothiers
207
320
234
600
*Glovers and Breeches Makers, and Stocking Manufacturers are listed in separate
categories in this directory.




Niche Trades in Edinburgh, 1841: Shawl Manufacturers, Ladies
Shoemakers
Niche Trades Glasgow, 1841: Bootcrimpers, Button Manufacturers
Niche trades in Edinburgh, 1911: Kilt Makers, Ladies Tailors, Habit Makers
and Court Dressmakers, Sporran Manufacturers, Wigmakers.
Niche trades in Glasgow, 1911: Grave and Gown Manufacturers,
Underclothing Manufacturers, Muffler and Scarf Manufacturers, Naval
Uniform Makers.
Decorative Art,
goods and services
Japanners
Pocketbook and Jewel
Case Makers
Pen / Quill Makers




Edinburgh 1841
2
3
Glasgow
1841
8
6
Edinburgh
1911
5
16
Glasgow
1911
12
7
2
4
2
3
Niche Trades in Edinburgh, 1841: Floorcloth Manufacturers, Quill
Manufacturers and Pen Makers
Niche Trades Glasgow, 1841: Snuff Box Manufacturers, Comb and Spoon
Makers
Niche trades in Edinburgh, 1911: Leather Japanners, Tobacco Pipe Makers
Niche trades in Glasgow, 1911: Bird and Animal Stuffers, Canister Makers,
Chandelier Manufacturers, Floorcloth and Linoleum Manufacturers
13