The Norie Miller Studio
The Norie Miller Studio,
Perth Concert Hall,
Mill Street,
Perth PH1 5HZ
Saturday 26th October - Sunday 27th October 2013
ABSTRACTS
Saturday 26th October, Session 1
An Architecture of Accrual
Andrew McKean
James Baine, His Majesty’s Master Wright: Principal Building Works and Contracts
James Baine was a wright and merchant burgess of Edinburgh operating in Scotland during the second half of the seventeenth century. This paper presents an account of his working life, followed by an examination of his work at the principal building works where he was employed, namely Panmure House, Glamis and Brechin Castle. An analysis of the surviving contracts and other records from these works enriches our understanding of the buildings, the sequence of their construction, and the materials required for their completion. Documentary evidence is especially significant in the case of Panmure, which was demolished in 1955 leaving no physical evidence from the original building, but is also important for both Glamis and Brechin where later modifications have obscured or removed the building works referred to in the written sources. Furthermore, these building case studies demonstrate a transition in building organisation from a system of direct labour to a system based increasingly on contracts, revealing not only the challenges encountered by its adoption, but also Baine’s emergence as a main contractor and master of works.
Kate Newland
The Noble Houses of George Keith, the 4th Earl Marishal
The Earls Marischal were the richest nobles in Scotland; it was said they could travel from Berwick-upon-Tweed to the tip of Caithness and eat and sleep every night in their own houses. With more than twenty identified noble houses, these ranged from the modest tower of Hallforest to that most famous renaissance palace of Dunnottar. In this paper I will provide a brief survey of these properties to see what they might say about the earls, especially in relation to George Keith, the fourth earl (1553-1623), a prolific cultural patron and founder of Marischal College, Aberdeen, during the reign of James VI. This paper will explore what uses these houses were put to and whether there were any common design features or qualities.
Miles Kerr-Peterson
Modernising the Medieval: re-casting the castle in early 16th century Scotland
James IV’s commissioning of ‘The King’s Old Building’ at Stirling in the 1490s symbolises a transitional point in the planning of Scottish high-status semi-public and residential space. In its emphasis on horizontal disposition of space and communication, and external symmetry, it departed from the well-established medieval tradition of verticality; it exemplifies the adoption of renaissance design in Scottish elite residences. This paper explores the place of this structure in Scottish castle design, focussing on three examples where existing medieval buildings were replaced or modified: Caerlaverock, Castle Campbell and Ballinbreich. At the first, the west range of the medieval courtyard was reconstructed by Lord Maxwell in the late 15th century to provide new suites of high-status lodging and reception space for an enlarged household. In Castle Campbell, the Master of James IV’s Household, Archibald, 2nd earl of Argyll, completed the remodelling of the south range in the years around 1500 to a plan influenced by the royal work at Stirling. The final example is Ballinbreich, where the 2nd earl of Rothes oversaw the remodelling of the west range of the 14th century courtyard castle to provide a spacious semi-public suite of chambers.
Richard Oram
Saturday 26th October, Session 2
Continuity, Transition and Change: Decorative Plasterwork in Late Seventeenth Century Scotland
Seventeenth-century Scotland witnessed a flowering of decorative plasterwork. There are in the region of a hundred properties where decorative plasterwork from this period survives or has been recorded, ranging from royal palaces containing many highly-decorated schemes, to small rooms in town houses embellished only by a handful of decorative casts. Yet the cultural influences that affected the development of this branch of interior decoration are little understood.
This paper is a study of decorative plasterwork in mid to late seventeenth-century Scotland a period which saw a significant stylistic change in the type of plasterwork commissioned by patrons.
The themes which emerge from this study are first; the popularity of decorative plasterwork in Scotland during the early seventeenth century relied heavily upon leading cultural figures in the absence of the Royal Court in Edinburgh and continued at least a century long tradition of ceiling decoration. Second, the sudden lack of any cultural leadership in the third decade of the seventeenth century may in part be the reason why Scotland continued to patronise a style of plasterwork that was going out-of-fashion in the south of England. Third, although Scottish-based plasterers were beginning to react to changes in fashion popular in England in the later seventeenth century, it again relied once again on government to lead cultural change in Scotland. Finally, this paper considers the change in the role that decorative plasterwork played for it patrons as the century progressed.
William Napier
Function versus Symbolism: the role of furnishings
Michael Pearce is writing a PhD with Dundee University and the National Museum of Scotland. Charles McKean and David Caldwell set up the project to better understand furnishings in Scotland in the sixteenth and seventeenth century from inventory evidence. Written evidence reveals a wide vocabulary for furnishings which, for grander houses, changes markedly over the period, particularly in the late seventeenth century. A small number of inventories give detailed information on room names which can be matched to buildings including ruins such as Huntly Castle and the Bog o' Gight (in 1648) and Balgonie, Fife (1675). One aim of the research is to detect if any aspects of furnishing are as distinctive as the Scottish architectural settings. This talk presents some preliminary findings.
Michael Pearce
Understanding French 16th Century Interiors
Monique Chatenet
Saturday 27th October, Session 3
Ellipse to Eclipse: tracing the path of the Mylne family’s Jupiter, John Mylne (1611-67)
Following ‘Mylne spoor’, as Charles described it, is a task which rewards examination, despite the problems of dealing with a period whose buildings and documentary evidence are often fragmentary or missing, due to redevelopment, wars and changed taste. Our trail is faint at first, starting with a likely Mylne family project in Perth, and takes us to two of John Mylne’s as yet unattributed church projects, deriving from his Tron Church. Their distinctive characteristics provide us with his mark, and what emerges is no less than his prototype for the Covenating Scottish Church, mirroring Laudian and Jesuit essays of the same period. That later generations of architects revered him and his work is clear from their recreating its key features, a remarkable anomaly when they were also building the new Athens. It was not to last, however, in the later nineteenth century. His inventions are rooted in rediscovered ancient tradition which he passed on to his descendants, as they returned to similar forms and their engineering advantages for larger structures such as bridges: the ruins of the Mylnes’ Perth Bridge in 1621 can be seen as the grain of sand in the otherwise incredible pearl of Robert Mylne’s Blackfriars Bridge.
Paul Harding
From Du Cerceau to Du Cerceau: Scottish aristocratic architectural taste c. 1570-1750
W. Douglas Simpson’s pioneering work on Glenbuchat (1941) and Drochil (1951/2) suggested that De L’Orme and Du Cerceau’s works influenced contemporary Scottish architecture but his leads were not followed up for the next fifty years, largely due to the eminence of Stewart Cruden, who in his The Scottish Castle (1960) rejected the idea that French influence could be detected except in a very few examples. However, it has become increasingly clear that Du Cerceau’s influence is embedded within some key examples of Scottish castle and country house architecture from the late sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth centuries, and only waned after 1745. It is likely that there are more examples which, have simply not yet been recognised.
Ian Campbell
When Rome met Scotland: the architecture of Mr James Smith at the end of seventeenth century and its legacy
Rome was since the sixteenth-century a reference for British architects. Before Inigo Jones went to Rome the Scotsman Alexander Seton spent seven years there. While the work of architects such as Bramante, Peruzzi, and Michelangelo was popular in the seventeenth-century, Bernini’s and Borromini’s most recent innovations seemed to be almost unknown or uninteresting in Britain. French and English publications actively criticised Baroque architecture, as arbitrary and monstrous. Furthermore in Scotland, just before James Smith’s four years in Rome (1671-5), the Roman architectural references seemed to come only from secondary sources. This paper challenges current historiography placing the importance of Smith’s architecture only in relation with the origin of British Palladianism, and analyses its wider significance and its inspiration from contemporary Roman trends as well as from Scottish vernacular architecture. Smith is the first modern figure of Scottish architect-designer and independent professional, differentiated from mason-builder. After centuries in which practical experience was the main requirement to design buildings, architecture became a cultural enterprise and gradually the result of academic learning and research. Unlike Inigo Jones, who was interested in ancient sources, and Colen Campbel, whose academicism disliked the Roman architecture of seventeenth-century, Smith is very interested in the contemporary Roman architecture and theoretical debates, bringing both to Scotland and influencing a new generation of architects in Britain.
Cristina González-Longo
Sunday 27th October, Session 4
‘Things that may add to the pleasures of the place’: situating Fyvie Castle in its late Renaissance landscape.
Apart from being one of the most powerful officers of state in the late 16th/early 17th century, Alexander Seton, 1st Earl of Dunfermline and Chancellor of Scotland, was a deeply intellectual humanist scholar and patron of the arts, steeped in the high culture of the European Renaissance. Seton acquired Fyvie Castle in northern Aberdeenshire in 1596, establishing it as his principal seat. Today the building stands marooned amidst the vast expanses of green lawn and rolling parkland of a Picturesque designed landscape of the late 18th to early 19th century. Consequently, analyses of Seton’s transformation of Fyvie Castle into a magnificent Renaissance palace have focused exclusively on what remains of his architectural endeavours – a shadow, albeit glorious, of Seton’s original vision. A programme of archaeological excavation and geophysical survey in the castle’s immediate environs, combined with further architectural analysis and documentary research, is now revealing the complex designed landscape established as an integral element of Seton’s architectural programme. This is providing new insights into the way in which visitors, friends and family were intended to engage with the building. This engagement began far out in the landscape, involving various symbolic themes pertinent to Seton’s preoccupations with concepts of diplomacy, nobility and honour in the wider European cultural context.
Shannon Fraser
1603 and all that. The Strange Case of Scottish Architecture
Aonghus Mackechnie
'See, read, think and attend': gardens of the mind in early seventeenth century Scotland
Gardens in the early seventeenth century reflect the background of the individual owner and patron and, as with the choice of architectural style and type of building, might reflect his sense of his status and his place in Scotland. Edzell provides the foremost example in Scotland of a garden whose owner chose to display the important concerns of his intellectual and political life in his garden. The year 1604 was that in which James VI tried to secure a union of England and Scotland and through his garden Sir David Lindsay celebrated the hoped-for Magna Britannia. Research into the sculptured panels of the Seven Liberal Arts and the Seven Virtues traces their origins in Northern Europe around 1600 and bears further witness to the breadth and extent of his interests and contacts.
Marilyn Brown
The Art of Retrospection
Perceptions of the Scottish nobility in the seventeenth century have undergone a decisive change since the publication of Charles McKean’s ‘Scottish Chateau’. The traditional image of an inverted, retrospective society has been replaced by one of a well-educated, cosmopolitan group that was as enlightened as any in northern Europe. Why did so many of its members in the aftermath of the Restoration elect to rebuild their country houses in the ‘castle style’? This paper investigates the structure of noble society in Scotland and the reaction of the ancient nobilities of Europe to the rise of the newly-rich. Although the Scottish experience closely resembled that of northern Europe, it was strongly influenced by the country’s long-term relationship with England. Having lived for generations in the shadow of a richer, more powerful and aggressive neighbour, the Scots developed an obsession with history and lineage: an instinct so strong that it still survives to this day.
Charles Wemyss
Sunday 27th October, Session 5
From Renaissance to Baroque RE-ordering the Setting of the Scottish Country Seat c. 1640-1700
The seventeenth century setting of the Scottish Country seat and its various components have, with a few notable exceptions, received little attention from historians. Even the garden and designed landscapes have been ignored by many who have made the dubious assumption that the formal style of the Renaissance garden continued unaltered until the Capability Brown's disciples brought the English Landscape Garden north of the border. It is that gap that is discussed here. A case is made for the value of the setting as a source of evidence for cultural shift during the second half of the seventeenth century. Changes made in the overall layout and in individual components are examined and questions raised about the kind of cultural shift that appears to have been taking place.
Sue Hewer
New buildings for old: the afterlife of restored towers and castles
The second half of the twentieth century saw a ‘Golden Age’ of castle and tower house restoration in Scotland. During this time well over one hundred ruined or derelict castles and towers were rebuilt and reoccupied, mostly by new private owners who purchased the building with a view to restoring it. This was a far greater number of restorations than at any time in the past, and indeed a far greater level of castle-related building activity than at any time since the sixteenth century. Yet the literature on castles has largely by-passed this modern ‘renaissance’ of Renaissance buildings. Tracking of the functional use of the restored castles and towers shows a varied and constantly changing picture. Many have entered the high-end housing market, signaling the commodification of the buildings; some have been bought and sold multiple times to ever wealthier owners, while others earn their keep as luxury accommodation. A smaller number have found new uses as museums, offices, multi-occupancy apartment buildings or educational establishments. Will these restoration projects survive during the century ahead? It is argued that conservation and heritage protection alone, while necessary, is not sufficient, and that safety comes also from the economic value placed on towers and castles.
Janet Brennan-Inglis
Authenticity in restoration projects: conserving Scotland’s ruined castles
In conserving the architecture of the past, the general idea of authenticity naturally figures large in our minds. To remove “authenticity”, to create “inauthenticity” during work to repair or to revive a structure, seems to run counter to our intent of preserving past achievements. Yet, authenticity has often become a puzzling and difficult – even a controversial – issue. As conservation theory has evolved in the more rarefied, thoughtful echelons of the conservation establishment over the last three or four decades, authenticity threatens to become the Holy Grail of conservation theorists and of the writers of Conservation Charters. It has at times inadvertently become the end in itself, rather than the means to a wider cultural objective.
Several very different conservation and restoration approaches are explored in the light of this examination of “authenticity”. The preservation of the authentic - of the real or genuine- remains a worthy objective, but only within a framework which admits the importance of making hard, practical decisions aimed at an overall objective of keeping valued structures with us, alive, and in our lives: there is no one-fits-all approach to conservation or to restoration, and it is considered judgement which counts.
Michael Davis
‘The Knowledge Bridge’: sharing research with a wider audience through interpretation.
A look at the ways in which recent research in Scottish Renaissance studies has been guiding and informing Historic Scotland’s visitor interpretation. Includes four short case studies: Huntingtower Castle, Elcho Castle, Huntly Castle and Carnasserie Castle.
Fiona Fleming