Phoebe Anna Traquair HRSA (1852-1936) and her contribution to arts and crafts in Edinburgh

Abstract

The thesis examines the career of the artist and craft worker Phoebe Traquair (1B52-1936) and her role in both the establishment and development of an Edinburgh arts and, crafts school between the 1880s and the 1920s, The first chapter looks at early influences on Traquair, concentrating on. the nature of art training in her native Dublin and both private and public taste in the visual, Including decorative, arts in the Scottish capital. The second chapter describes the formation and early history of the Edinburgh Social Union, which gave Traquair her first mural scheme commission In 1885, and relates the Union to current guild developments in British arts and crafts: her work in. the field of manuscript illumination is discussed in the contexts of relationship to the scheme and of her encouragement by Ruskin. An account in chapter three of public debate in Edinburgh on the interdependence of British applied arts and architecture introduces three further major Edinburgh mural schemes by Traquair which display increased confidence, technical proficiency and a more direct awareness of wider English developments.

Chapter four views Traquair's involvement in technical experimentation as one aspect of an Edinburgh craft renaissance of the nineties. Her work in the disciplines of Illustration, illuminatIon and bookbinding, and her established identity not only as a mural decorator but as both an individual craft worker and a member of local and British guils in this decade are discussed in chapter five. The breadth of her London reputation, partly symptomatic of closer personal links between Edinburgh and London in the new century, is described in an essay on her enamelwork which forms chapter six. The final chapter discusses further commissions received from private patrons and through architects in the post-1900 period, ranging from ecclesiastical and domestic decoration to book illustration. In conclusion, the career of Phoebe Traquair, like that of fellow Edinburgh craftwarkers, is seen to have been bath stylistically and theoretically allied to English and especially London practice. In personal terms Traquair's approach to her work is judged to have been essentially the result of loyality to the values of Ruskin, with an intrinsic dedication to spiritual ideals, and of a broad and alert interest in and. response to historic and contemporary arts, shared with members of various circles of friends in and outside Edinburgh including scholars, clerics, craftworkers, architects, and collectors.