| dc.description.abstract | This thesis examines the jewellery craft in Scotland between 1780 and 1914 with a
focus on the relationship between materials, making processes, and the social and
cultural meanings of objects. While dominant narratives of craft in this period frame
producers as the victims of industrialisation, this thesis considers Scotland’s jewellers
as cultural actors who shaped their own worlds during a period of profound
economic, social and cultural change. A material culture approach is employed to
examine the work of Scotland’s jewellers through the things they made. Fusing
object-based research with a wide range of visual and textual sources, the thesis
shows how producers applied their skill, knowledge and creativity to manipulate raw
matter into meaningful objects that not only reflected, but brought about wider social
and cultural shifts. Through a focus on materiality, the thesis builds on new
methodological approaches to the history of material culture to show how the
mutable meanings of matter and workmanship impacted on the ways in which
jewellery was produced, consumed, worn and perceived.
Scotland provides a rich area of focus for this study. The country has a long
history of quality craft production in jewellery and silverware, with the geological and
natural diversity of the region providing jewellers with precious metals, coloured
stones and freshwater pearls. The study examines industry dynamics, artisanal
education and making processes to show how jewellers fashioned an image of their
craft that was rooted in ideas of history, inherited skill and quality. The life cycle of
native materials is traced from their raw state through the workshop and on to
owners’ bodies to reveal how changes in workshop production were inseparable from
shifting aesthetics and cultural ideas relating to nature, landscape and the past. These
findings complicate the persistent myth of the decline of craft as a result of
industrialisation to show that the desire for Scottish-made jewellery stimulated new
and revived skills and trades that cut across urban and rural areas. While the thesis is
geographically specific to Scotland, it places luxury producers within the
interdisciplinary domain of cultural history to provide new insights into the study of
the multifaceted transformations that marked British industry during the long-nineteenth
century. | en |
