The Signet Library 200th Anniversary Online Exhibition

art, artifacts and ephemera

 The Signet Library Archives Artifacts and Ephemera Collection contains many thousands of  works and items ranging from precious oil paintings, watercolours and prints to seals, photographs and historic collections of furniture.

The Riddell Seals Collection

We begin this section of the Exhibition with a new online presentation of the Signet Library’s unique Riddell Seals Collection, a collection of some 150 wax seals of individuals and institutions from the era of the Enlightenment collected by the great antiquarian lawyer John Riddell (1785-1862) and his brother James. These have been restored, rehoused and researched by WS Society conservator Joanna Hockey and represent one of the greatest individual collections to survive from the period. The seals are accompanied by the Riddell’s own original notes and Joanna Hockey’s modern commentary.

We continue with The Sketchbooks of William Miller (1796-1882), images from a collection of early drawings by J.M.W. Turner’s favourite interpreter of his own works, the Edinburgh artist and engraver William Miller.

William Miller was the scion of an ancient Edinburgh family of Quakers, and spent most of his working life at his Edinburgh home at Hope Park, renamed Millerfield late in his life. Miller’s sketchbooks were part of an extraordinary gift made by his family to a number of leading British libraries during World War II in which Miller’s archives were distributed to institutions which would record and care for them.

The Signet Library holds two Miller sketchbooks, a volume of Miller proof engravings, the Miller family’s original annotated copy of Miller’s biography and a number of personal photographs and drawings, some of which are shown in this part of the exhibition.

Coming Soon:

Photography at the Signet Library – a guide to the Signet Library’s collection of early Scottish photobooks and works of photography

The Douglas Bequest and Sir Walter Scott Collection – including our most recent donation by the Douglas family of a portrait in oils of Christopher Douglas WS (1811-1894) , believed to be by Sir John Watson Gordon  (1788-1864) along with important family books and photographs. The Douglas family, particularly Alexander Douglas WS (1780-1851), were closely associated with Sir Walter Scott and other Edinburgh literary figures of the late Enlightenment and this new donation joins letters and manuscripts of Sir Walter Scott along with a wealth of unique material relating to the Scott-Ballantyne Affair. Sir Walter Scott himself began his legal career as an apprentice to his father, Walter Scott WS, working at the George Square home and office on Edinburgh’s Southside that marked one of the first professional departures from the Edinburgh Old Town to the new Georgian townscapes that began in Edinburgh and would influence city design around the world for centuries.

The Letters and Papers of James Anderson WS (1662-1728), early Enlightenment scholar, author of the Diplomata Scotiae and other works, Scottish pioneer of the study and authentication of early documents and head of the Post Office in Scotland.