Aspects of Scottish-Canadian Material Culture: Heart Brooches and Scottish Pottery

Type of resource
Authors/collaborators
Title
Aspects of Scottish-Canadian Material Culture: Heart Brooches and Scottish Pottery
Abstract
An investigation of two inter-connected aspects of Scottish and Canadian material culture - the heart-shaped brooches, popularly known as "luckenbooths," and Scottish pottery. In Scotland, the heart-shaped luckenbooths were popular love tokens dating from the late seventeenth century and became one of the bartering items with Aboriginal peoples used by Montreal-based Scottish fur traders in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Robert Cruickshank (1743-1809), a Scottish-born silversmith and one of the major Montreal-based makers of trade silver, was the leading supplier of the brooches and other silver trade items to the city's predominately Scottish fur traders. Scottish pottery was extremely popular in Canada in the nineteenth century, especially a type known as sponge-printed and hand-painted ware. The author points out that this type of Scottish-made pottery was so common in Canada during this period that it was originally believed to have been manufactured in Portneuf, near Quebec City. To cater to the Canadian market, Scottish manufacturers used Canadian designs for their dinner earthenware. One Scottish company used an earthenware design of idealized Canadian winter scenes, based directly on scenes from Christmas cards published by William Bennett & Co. of Montreal.
Book Title
A Kingdom of the Mind: How the Scots Helped Make Canada
Place
Montreal and Kingston
Publisher
McGill-Queen's University Press
Date
2006
Pages
122-136
Language
en
Citation
Dalgleish, George R. “Aspects of Scottish-Canadian Material Culture: Heart Brooches and Scottish Pottery.” In A Kingdom of the Mind: How the Scots Helped Make Canada, edited by Peter E. Rider and Heather McNabb, 122–136. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006.
Find in a library
Permalink