In the daily life of the Signet Library, rare discoveries are still being made. In October 2022, a rare and unrecorded work by the pioneering mid-nineteenth-century Edinburgh photography studio of Hill and Adamson was found among the shelves of the upper library. A Series of Calotype Views of St Andrews of 1846 was the world’s first photographic work devoted to the architecture of a single place. After careful conservation work, the album will be the centrepiece of an event to be held at the Signet Library in March 2023 as part of the post—Covid returning Edinburgh Rare Books Festival.
Only seven complete copies of Calotype Views are known to survive worldwide, and the Signet Library’s volume is the only one to be found in Edinburgh. It is in superb condition and contains some of the best surviving examples of Hill and Adamson’s work, a wonderful primary source not only in the history of early photography but of immense value to social and architectural historians. At the March event, there will be a talk surveying scholarship around the making of this album, placing it in the wider context of Hill and Adamson’s photographic partnership and the social world of artistic Edinburgh and Scotland in the 1840s. Accompanying the talk, there will be a display featuring a selection from the Signet Library’s collection of historic photography.
