Sally Tuckett’s research while affiliated with University of Glasgow and other places

Fashion studies and dress and textile histories are increasingly popular avenues of study at undergraduate and postgraduate levels in the United Kingdom, and as such there is continuing debate both on how to engage in general with these fields, as well as how institutions in particular can interpret and deliver courses relating to these subjects. This article outlines how the postgraduate MLitt in Dress and Textile Histories at the University of Glasgow developed from previous incarnations at Winchester School of Art and the University of Southampton. It explores some of the challenges faced by institutions and students engaging with fashion studies and dress and textile histories, using the Glasgow MLitt programme as a case study.

This article considers relationships between artisans and aristocrats on estates and elsewhere in Scotland during the long nineteenth century. It argues that the Scottish aristocracy, and women in particular, were distinctly preoccupied with the craft economy through schemes to promote employment but also due to attachments to 'romanticised' local and Celtic identities. Building in part on government initiatives and aristocratic office-holding as public officials and presidents of learned societies, but also sustained through personal interest and emotional investments, the craft economy and individual entrepreneurs were supported and encouraged. Patronage of and participation in public exhibitions of craftwork forms one strand of discussion and the role of hand-made objects in public gift-giving forms another. Tourism, which estates encouraged, sustained many areas of craft production with southwest Scotland and the highland counties providing examples. Widows who ran estates were involved in the development of artisan skills among local women, a convention that was further developed at the end of the century by the Home Industries movement, but also supported male artisans. Aristocrats, men and women, commonly engaged in craft practice as a form of escapist leisure that connected them to the land, to a sense of the past and to a small group of easily identified and sympathetic workers living on their estates. Artisans and workshop owners, particularly in rural areas, engage creatively in a patronage regime where elites held the upper hand and the impact on the craft economy of aristocratic support in its various forms was meaningful.

Through examining the surviving records of tartan manufacturers, William Wilson & Son of Bannockburn, this article looks at the production and use of tartan in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. While it does not deny the importance of the various meanings and interpretations attached to tartan since the mid-eighteenth century, this article contends that more practical reasons for tartan's popularity-primarily its functional and aesthetic qualities-merit greater attention. Along with evidence from contemporary newspapers and fashion manuals, this article focuses on evidence from the production and popular consumption of tartan at the turn of the nineteenth century, including its incorporation into fashionable dress and its use beyond the social elite. This article seeks to demonstrate the contemporary understanding of tartan as an attractive and useful commodity.

Ayrshire whitework, a form of embroidery considered a cheap and popular alternative to lace, was a significant industry in the nineteenth century. Employing thousands of women particularly in the south west of Scotland in the 1850s, the whitework trade combined skill and handicraft with industrial scale organisation, only to decline dramatically by the end of the century. Using census returns, parliamentary reports and contemporary commentary, this article explores the workings of the Ayrshire whitework industry. It will account for the dramatic rise and fall of the industry within the nineteenth century, looking in closer detail at the women of Ayr in particular, and build on existing literature to examine attempts to revive the industry at the turn of the twentieth century.

The production of Turkey red dyed and printed cottons was a major industry in the west of Scotland, particularly in the mid- to late nineteenth century. Although the extensive works were pulled down in the second half of the twentieth century, our knowledge of this industry is significantly aided by the survival of approximately 200 pattern books, now housed in the National Museums Scotland. These pattern books, examined along with business papers, exhibition catalogues and the Board of Trade Design Registers, are the foundation for a new study into the wider Scottish decorative textile industry. The ongoing examination of these pattern books has shown the variety and longevity of Turkey red dyed and printed patterns, as well as providing insights into wider aspects of the textile industry, including issues of design, manufacture and trade.