Who is this Elegant Edwardian Gentleman?

This is a departure from my usual Scottish Home posts which tend to be about textiles, my other passion in life along with writing. And as regular readers will know, I quite often manage to combine the two, as in my novel The Curiosity Cabinet! As an interesting aside (well, interesting for textile and vintage nuts like me) when the Curiosity Cabinet was being prepared for its first publication as a paperback, rather than the Kindle edition, the publisher's editor queried my reference to 'bright Indian cottons' as anachronistic. It wasn't. It was about right for the time and place of the novel. She was fully entitled to query things she didn't understand, but this was one area in which I had done my homework, mostly because I'm fairly obsessed with such things!

However, this isn't a post about antique textiles, for a wonder, but instead, it's a post about antique and vintage... er... people. I buy lots of my textiles at auction, in various salerooms, as well as at antique markets, car boot sales and charity shops. But sometimes, I get a little more than I bargained for. This handsome chap - a head and shoulders portrait in oils - came with a bundle of very beautifully embroidered pictures - not hugely old, but well executed.  There is no name on it, and no signature either, but you can tell from the back of it that it's rather old and very nicely done. I mean he's a real person, isn't he? Unfortunately, I have no idea who he is - a Scottish Edwardian gentleman. He could be a politician, I suppose. He seems like a gentleman of consequence. Maybe he was an artist or an architect. Maybe he designed some of those splendid Glasgow buildings. If he was my great grandfather, I would want to know, but somebody cleared him out along with various household possessions, and put him up for auction in among a heap of other things. I'll probably try to 'rehome' him on my eBay shop. There are people out there who collect portraits even if they don't know who they are - although he's sustained a little damage over his years spent in somebody's attic, and could probably do with some professional cleaning. I like him though. I like his wide set eyes and that fine moustache!  Writers like this kind of thing - we're free to invent whatever we want, and that makes him intriguing. What do you think?

Our Belated but Beautiful Designer Burns Supper (And a Spooky Picture!)

The Rustic Supper Table

We hosted a somewhat belated Burns Supper in our house last weekend. Our friends, John and Brenda Kevan, travelled from their home in the North of England, (although John is very much an Ayr lad) with a car full of tartan throws, cushion covers, and various other textiles, candlesticks, lanterns, and half the greenery in the Lake District. A bit like carrying coals to Newcastle, remarked Brenda, bringing Scots pine to Scotland!
John and Brenda have been wedding photographers for much of their working life so far, but Brenda has always had an interest in antique and vintage interiors and crafts and has a huge talent for interior design. 
This is a skill which I hope and trust she is finally going to begin to exploit in a number of exciting ways. Watch this blog for some interesting links coming towards the end of this year. Brenda brings a little magic to even the smallest of projects. Her Christmas gifts, for example, are invariably wrapped so beautifully that you can hardly bring yourself to open them! But she can also work on a grander scale - as she did here, last week.

Brenda spent all day Friday and most of Saturday transforming this old cottage (built only a few years after the death of Robert Burns, and while Jean Armour was still very much alive) into a rustic idyll - a perfect setting for a Burns Supper. These pictures give only some idea of just how magical it was. One of our guests, a young German visitor, was particularly enchanted. The long dining table (we were hosting some eighteen guests) was adorned with one of my gorgeous old damask tablecloths - I've had this for years and can never bring myself to sell it. I think it came from a country house, since it's enormous and it has deer and pheasants in the weave. Brenda had made a subtle tartan runner, and matching napkins. There were home-made lanterns, with moss and tartan ribbons, as well as rustic wooden candlesticks, miniature pine trees, and tiny pine cones. Hand-made menu holders, with Burns' portrait, and place cards with pictures and manuscript completed the look.

Fireplace trimmed with greenery, roses, feathers. Note spooky 'orbs' on TV set!

For the rest of the house, she mixed red roses (of course) with a variety of greenery and pheasant feathers in a selection of my own large earthenware jugs and vases, as well as a few jars she had brought herself. There was a statue of the poet, a quill pen, piles of old books of his poetry and even a couple of facsimile manuscripts, as well as more lanterns and candles - in short, it was a magical transformation of this cottage. As another friend remarked - you almost expected Rab to show up himself! Well, if you look closely at the middle picture, of the old fireplace, you'll see a profusion of 'orbs' on the right, in front of the television. Of course it could just be the flash from the camera bouncing off the screen, but I have another picture taken from the same spot and with the same flashlight, with nothing showing. So who knows? Maybe he did!

Rab himself with facsimile manuscripts, quill etc

Brenda's Beautiful Fruit Sculpture

We hosted a summer barbecue in our garden yesterday. It started at 2 in the afternoon and finished at about 11 o'clock at night so it was a busy, sociable day. Since barbecue food is quite rich, I'd bought masses of fresh fruit, especially strawberries and stone fruits such as greengages and apricots, and when my friend Brenda Kevan, who was staying with us over the weekend, asked if she could do something, I suggested that she make a fruit sculpture, using a beautiful big turned wooden bowl that Alan bought me a while ago. Here it is:

Isn't it beautiful?



Brenda, incidentally, is absolutely brilliant at interior design and all kinds of associated 'vintage' things. She and her husband John have worked as wedding photographers for many years, and very good they are too, but I think Brenda's first love has always been design - creating a 'look' just for pleasure. Whenever you get a gift from Brenda, it will be beautifully wrapped and embellished with some wonderful and original little extra. One Christmas, for instance, all our gifts had small, flat beach pebbles with our names and the year written on them. I have them still, tucked into my Christmas pot pourri. She has made a design paradise of a little studio at the bottom of her garden in Lancashire, and her house is full of fascinating corners and collections including an outdoor 'room' where - whenever we're visiting - we eat and drink in inspiring surroundings. She's so full of excellent ideas that I always think it's a shame that she doesn't do this kind of design full time. I suspect if given the opportunity, she would be able to provide material (and illustrations) for a dozen interesting books!