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.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-12-17T15:25:13Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 DanielB_DISSERT.pdf: 2573358 bytes, checksum: 33be3ca270a53f78f47959d30740d6d1 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-10-05 / This work aims to understand how the installation of sugar culture along the river Cear?-Mirim defined the spatial organization of the Valley, and thus setting the landscape. This space has begun to be defined only in the second half of the nineteenth century, when the sugarcane growth had atarted on land located on the banks of the river Cear?-Mirim. The passage of this period of great prosperity can be seen through the heritage material which is still presented in the region. Walking through the Valley, we found a considerable number of architectural buildings, many in ruins, linked to this historical moment. This perception, caused by these buildings, will take us on a trip to the past, back to a time characterized by great-houses, mills, sugarcane plantations, planters, slaves, etc. The references that lead us to consider the sugar mills located along the valley of Cear? Mirim as a patrimony, which carry an entire historical baggage, guide us to the first half of the twentieth century. During this period, the role of intellectuals from the Rio - Sao Paulo through the modernist movement will be decisive in the formation of a national identity. The heritage material identified along the valley of Cear? Mirim defined its current spatial organization, setting the landscape. But we must conceive this landscape into two ways: first, as a material representation of social practices carried out in this space, where social, cultural, economic and environmental aspects have interacted to their training; as well as a landscape that carries a whole historical baggage which was built throughout the twentieth century / Este trabalho tem o objetivo de entender como a instala??o da cultura a?ucareira ao longo do rio Cear?-Mirim definiu a organiza??o espacial do Vale, configurando assim a paisagem. Esse espa?o come?ou a ser definido somente na segunda metade do s?culo XIX, quando se iniciou o cultivo da cana de a??car nas terras localizadas nas margens do rio Cear?-Mirim. A passagem deste per?odo de grande prosperidade pode ser observada atrav?s do patrim?nio material ainda presente na regi?o. Percorrendo o Vale, verificamos um n?mero consider?vel de constru??es arquitet?nicas, muitas em ru?nas, ligadas a esse momento hist?rico. Essa percep??o, causada por essas constru??es, nos leva h? uma viagem ao passado, para um tempo caracterizado por casas-grande, engenhos, planta??es de cana, senhores de engenho, escravos, etc. Os referenciais que nos levam a considerar os engenhos de a??car localizados ao longo do Vale do Cear?-Mirim como patrim?nio, que carregam toda uma bagagem hist?rica, remete-nos a primeira metade do s?culo XX. Nesse per?odo, a atua??o de intelectuais do eixo Rio S?o Paulo atrav?s do movimento modernista ser? decisivo na constitui??o de uma identidade nacional. O patrim?nio material identificado ao longo do Vale do Cear?-Mirim definiu a sua atual organiza??o espacial, configurando a paisagem. Mas devemos conceber essa paisagem de duas formas: primeiro, como uma representa??o material das praticas sociais realizadas neste espa?o, onde aspectos sociais, culturais, econ?micos e ambientais interagiram para a sua forma??o; como tamb?m, uma paisagem que carrega toda uma bagagem hist?rica formada ao longo do s?culo XX

The late-Victorian and Edwardian period marked the zenith of urban park construction, spurred on in part by concerns about the physical and moral health of those living in the city. For the middle-class reformers at the time, public parks offered a space through which the unique and complex social issues of the era could be addressed and resolved. The public park was unique in that it made children visible on an unprecedented scale. Their role was fixed at the very heart of discourses on health; of the body, the mind, the nation, and the empire. This research explores these discussions of identity, and how that was negotiated by children in the very specific landscape of the public park. Previous work on the concept of childhood during this period has focused on an adult interpretation of the figure of the child, steeped in nostalgia and imbued with an adult fear and hope for the future. I argue that this ignores the lived experience of the child, and denies them agency in creating their own identity. This thesis uses a methodology inspired by current research in the emerging interdisciplinary field of childhood studies and drawing on the insights of material cultures studies to address this. The park space offers a unique opportunity to study lived experiences of childhood, designed as it was for use by the general public, with children firmly in mind. This work addresses the gaps in our knowledge and understanding of public urban parks in relation to children and explores the idea of a late-Victorian and Edwardian childhood identity as a complex and nuanced phenomenon. Throughout my thesis I use three parks as my primary case studies. These are Saltwell Park in Gateshead, Whitworth Park in Manchester, and Greenhead Park in Huddersfield. All three parks are situated in towns in the north of England that experienced dramatic change as a result of the industrial revolution and so reflect the anxieties present nationwide as a result of this change. By way of contrast I also consider parks in London and elsewhere to understand the uniqueness of these parks but also how they were situated within broader national debates over children and childhood. My investigation is broken down into three major thematic areas, each of which seeking to explore and analyse a particular aspect of childhood identity. The first of the three themes is the ‘Natural Child’. I explore the notion that children were thought of having a greater connection with, or affinity for, the natural world, and that they benefitted in particular from access to nature. The second area of research is the ‘Playful Child’. Here the idea that children were inherently playful, frivolous and could be shaped through correct play will be discussed. Finally, I investigate the ‘Empire Child’, exploring the notion of the child as the future of the Empire and the Nation, and the embodiment of concerns over racial superiority, military conquest and economic power. Within each of these sections I examine the way that this idea is expressed in the prescriptive and other literature, before addressing the way in which these notions could be articulated in the park landscape. The material culture of the park and the way in which the parks encouraged or discouraged children’s behaviour is analysed in relation to each of these themes. Significantly I also show how children engaged with, or rejected, notions of childhood identity, acknowledging that children were not just passively receiving instruction, but were actively involved in negotiating their own identity.