The Legacy of Nineteenth-century Replicas for Object Cultural Biographies: Lessons in Duplication from 1830s Fife

Abstract

The St Andrews Sarcophagus and Norrie's Law hoard are two of the most important surviving Pictish relics from early medieval Scotland. The entanglement of their later biographies is also of international significance in its own right. Soon after discovery in nineteenth-century Fife, both sets of objects were subject, in 1839, to an exceptionally precocious, documented programme of replication through the enlightened auspices of an under-appreciated antiquarian, George Buist. This well-evidenced case study highlights how and why replicas, things that are widely prevalent in Europe and beyond, are a ‘thick’ and relatively unexplored seam of archaeological material culture that we ignore at our peril. These particular replications also offer new insights into the vision, intellectual and practical energies of early antiquarian societies, and their web of connections across Britain and Ireland.

Keywords::

• facsimiles
• plaster casts
• Norrie's Law hoard
• St Andrews Sarcophagus
• entanglement
• early photography

Acknowledgements

We repeat our thanks for the many people acknowledged in our earlier individual papers on the Sarcophagus and Norrie's Law hoard. In addition, SMF thanks the Principal's Excellence Fund of the University of Aberdeen for a travel grant, Christina Unwin for her ‘chorographic’ mapping skills, Cormac Bourke, Tom Bartlett, David Clarke, Neil Curtis, Sîan Jones, Ewan Macmillan and Rod McCullagh for information and advice, and Richard and Carol Griffiths for so very kindly using a part of their holiday to track down, check and photograph Buist's grave in Kolkata. Tara Kelly kindly allowed access to her unpublished PhD. Julian Jones, Mike Wall (well met on a train!) and Philip Bovey graciously helped to interpret Buist's passing reference to his photographic interests. AB and MG thank Susy Kirk for her work on the analysis of the silver in the Norrie's Law hoard. The Strathmartine Trust and Henry Moore Foundation supported the production and reproduction of many of the illustrations.

Notes

^1. See for example S.M. Pearce, Museums, Objects and Collections: A Cultural Study (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1992), p. 24; S. Moser, ‘Archaeological Representation: The Visual Conventions for Constructing Knowledge and the Past’, in Archaeological Theory Today, ed. by I. Hodder (Cambridge: Polity, 2001), pp. 262–83; and J. Nordbladh, ‘The Shape of History: To Give Physical Form to Archaeological Knowledge’, in Histories of Archaeological Practices. Reflections on Methods, Strategies and Social Organisation in Past Fieldwork, ed. by O. Wolfhechel Jensen (Stockholm: The National Historical Museum, 2012), pp. 241–57.

^2. J. Joy, ‘Biography of a Medal: People and the Things they Value’, in Matériel Culture. The Archaeology of Twentieth Century Conflict, ed. by J. Schofield, W.G. Johnson and C.M. Beck (London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 132–42.

^3. See for example J. Hoskins, ‘Agency, Biography and Objects’, in Handbook of Material Culture, ed. by C. Tilley, W. Keane, S. Küchler, M. Rowlands and P. Spyer (London: Sage), pp. 74–84. An example of such an approach is H. James, I. Henderson, S. Foster and S. Jones, A Fragmented Masterpiece: Recovering the Biography of the Hilton of Cadboll Pictish Cross-slab (Edinburgh: Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 2008), ch. 6; this is an interdisciplinary study that explores the complex biography of a major Pictish cross-slab from its creation 1200 years ago in northern Scotland to modern icon in the National Museum of Scotland.

^4. B. Latour and A. Lowe, ‘The Migration of the Aura, or How to Explore the Original through its Facsimiles’, in Switching Codes. Thinking through Digital Technology in the Humanities and the Arts, ed. by T. Bartscherer and R. Coover (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2011), pp. 275–97.

^5. M.F. Nichols, ‘Museum Material? An Institution-based Critique of the Historiography of Plaster Cast Sculpture’, in Material Worlds. Proceedings of the Conference held at Glasgow University, 2005, ed. by R. Moffat and E. de Klerk (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007), pp. 26–39; R. Frederiksen and E. Marchand, eds, Plaster Casts: Making, Collecting, and Displaying from Classical Antiquity to the Present (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2010); Edinburgh College of Art, Cast Contemporaries (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Arts and Social Sciences Academic Press, 2012).

^6. T.J. Edelstein, ed., Imagining an Irish Past. The Celtic Revival 1840–1940 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992); T. Kelly, ‘Commerce and the Celtic Revival: The History of the Irish Facsimile Industry, 1840–1940’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Trinity College Dublin, 2013).

^7. E.L. McCormick, ‘Crosses in Circulation: Processes and Patterns of Acquisition and Display of Early Medieval Sculpture in the National Museums of Britain and Ireland, circa 1850 to 1950’, unpublished doctoral thesis, University of York (2010); E.L. McCormick, ‘“The Highly Interesting Series of Irish crosses”: Reproductions of Early Medieval Irish Sculpture in Dublin and Sydenham’, in Making Histories. Proceedings of the Sixth International Insular Arts Conference, York 2011, ed. by J. Hawkes (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2013), pp. 358–71; S.M. Foster, ‘Embodied Energies, Embedded Stories: Releasing the Potential of Casts of Early Medieval Sculptures’, in Making Histories, ed. by Hawkes, pp. 339–55.

^8. Such as N. Curtis, ‘“The Original May Yet Be Discovered”: Seven Bronze Age Swords Supposedly from Netherley, Kincardineshire’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 137 (2007), 487–500.

^9. ‘Pict’ is the name generally applied to the native people living in eastern and northern Scotland from about AD 300–900.

^10. The sort of approach advocated in A. Jones, ‘Archaeometry and Materiality: Materials-based Analysis in Theory and Practice’, Archaeometry, 3 (2004), 327–38.

^11. Cf. L. Kriegel, Grand Designs. Labor, Empire, and the Museum in Victorian Culture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press), esp. pp. 127–30, 138–40.

^12. See e.g. A. MacGregor, ‘Antiquity Inventoried: Museums and “National Antiquities” in the Mid Nineteenth Century’, in The Study of the Past in the Victorian Age, ed. by V. Brand (Oxford: Oxbow, 1998), pp. 125–37.

^13. Cf. J. Morrison, Painting the Nation. Identity and Nationalism in Scottish Painting, 1800–1920 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003), ch. 7.

^14. S.M. Foster, ‘Circulating Agency: The V&A, Scotland and the Multiplication of “Celtic Crosses”’, Journal of the History of Collections (Advance Access 1 April 2014, DOI: 10.1093/jhc/fhu008).

^15. Accurate two-dimensional representations of Celtic art in general appeared from the beginning of the nineteenth century: M. Macdonald, ‘The Visual Preconditions of Celtic Revival Art in Scotland, Journal of the Scottish Society for Art History, 13 (2008–09), 16–21.

^16. Edelstein, Imagining an Irish Past; McCormick, ‘The Highly Interesting Series’; B. Effros, Uncovering the Germanic Past. Merovingian Archaeology in France, 1830–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); T. Kelly, ‘“Specimens of Modern Antique”: Commercial Facsimiles of Irish Archaeological Jewellery, 1840–1868’, in The Modern History of Celtic Jewellery 1840–1980, ed. by S. Walker (Andover, NY: Walker Metalsmiths, 2013), pp. 23–33.

^17. R. Ó Floinn, ‘Reproducing the Past: Making Replicas of Irish Antiquities’, in A Carnival of Learning. Essays to Honour George Cunningham and his 50 Conferences on Medieval Ireland in the Cistercian Abbey of Mount St. Joseph, Roscrea, 1987–2012, ed. by P. Harbison and V. Hall (Roscrea: Cistercian Press, 2012), pp. 146–57.

^18. Macdonald, ‘The Visual Preconditions’, p. 19.

^19. MacGregor, ‘Antiquity Inventoried’, pp. 127–36.

^20. T. Greenwood, Museums and Art Galleries (London: Simpkin, Marshall and Co., 1888), pp. 222–23; J.R. Allen, ‘A Museum for Christian Archaeology for Great Britain’, Archaeological Review, 1 (1888), 191–96.

^21. F. Herrmann, The English as Collectors: a Documentary Chrestomathy Selected, Introduced and Annotated by Frank Herrmann (London: Chatto & Windus, 1972), pp. 14–15.; C. Whitehead, Museums and the Construction of Disciplines. Art and Archaeology in Nineteenth-Century Britain (London: Duckworth, 2009), pp. 82–93.

^22. A. Way, ‘Introduction. March 1844’, Archaeological Journal, 1 (1845), 2–3; D. Westerhall, ‘The Growth of Archaeological Societies’, in Study of the Past, ed. by Brand, pp. 28–31.

^23. See for example C. Evans, ‘“ Delineating Objects”: Nineteenth Century Antiquarian Culture and the Project of Archaeology’, in Visions on Antiquity: The Society of Antiquaries of London 1907–2007, ed. by S. Pearce (London: Society of Antiquaries of London, 2007), pp. 266–305.

^24. J. Graham-Campbell, ‘Norrie's Law, Fife: On the Nature and Dating of the Silver Hoard’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 121 (1991), 241–59.

^25. G. Buist, Report by Mr George Buist on the Silver Fragments in the Possession of General Durham, Largo, commonly called the Silver Armour of Norrie's Law, to the Fifeshire Literary and Antiquarian Society (Fifeshire Journal Office: Cupar, 1839); G. Buist, ‘On the Ancient Sculptured Monument Discovered at St Andrews, in 1833’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 1 (1851–54), 234–37.

^26. W. Elliot, ‘Opening Address, 10 November 1870’ and ‘List of Field Clubs, Being a Continuation of the Address Delivered December 1870’, Transactions of the Botanical Society, 11 (1873), 1–41, 192–255 (pp. 242–50); D.V. Clarke, ‘Scottish Archaeology in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century’, in The Scottish Antiquarian Tradition. Essays to Mark the Bicentenary of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and its Museum, 1780–1980, ed. by A.S. Bell (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1981), pp. 114–41; P. Levine, The Amateur and the Professional. Antiquarians, Historians and Archaeologists in Victorian England, 1838–1886 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); D.A. Finnegan, Natural History Societies and Civic Culture in Victorian Scotland (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2009).

^27. R. Crawford, The Beginning and the End of the World. St Andrews, Scandal, and the Birth of Photography (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2011), p. 65. Buist only receives a mention here on p. 67 in the context of geological specimens he proposed sending from India in 1842.

^28.Fifeshire Journal, 13 February 1840, p. 2.

^29. Crawford, The Beginning and the End, especially ch. 3.

^30. S.M. Foster, ‘Discovery, Recovery, Context and Display’, in The St Andrews Sarcophagus: A Pictish Masterpiece and its International Connections, ed. by S.M. Foster (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1998), pp. 35–62.

^31. For detail see S.M. Foster, ‘‘Expiscation! (Un)entangling the Later Biography of the St Andrews Sarcophagus’, forthcoming, University of Aberdeen.

^32. ‘Memorial of the Committee of Management of the Fifeshire Literary Scientific & Antiquarian Society to the Council of the St Andrews Literary & Scientific Association’, unpublished manuscript, undated (probably late September 1839), Muniments of the University of St Andrews UY8528/1/21(a). This document is signed by an unknown figure and George Buist.

^33. Buist, Report, preface.

^34. ‘Treasurers Account Book for Literary & Philosophical Society’, Muniments of the University of St Andrews UY8527/1.

^35.Fifeshire Journal, 15 August 1838; 15 August, 1 October, 4 and 6 November 1839; 4 February 1840; Muniments of the University of St Andrews UY8525/1, Records of the St Andrews Literary and Philosophical Society April 1838 to 13 April 1861 (1838–1861), f. 37.

^36. Cf. Curtis, ‘“The Original May Yet Be Discovered”’.

^37. See further discussion of Buist's contribution to the study of Scottish early medieval archaeology in National Museum Scotland's future work on Pictish silver.

^38.Fife Herald, 19 December 1839, p. 3.

^39. Buist, Report, preface.

^40. Buist, Report, preface.

^41. Anonymous, ‘Appendix, List II. List of Donations Presented to the Society, from 1784 to 1830’, Archaeologia Scotica, 3 (1831), 31–148; and Anonymous, ‘Appendix. List of Donations Presented to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, MDCCCXXX–MDCCCLI [1830–51]’, Archaeologia Scotica, 5 (1890), 1–79. These articles provide the best gauge of early replica activity in Scotland.

^42. Buist, Report, p. 4.

^43. Buist, ‘On the Ancient Sculptured Monument’, p. 234.

^44. Published sources are contradictory about when he was born, and his own published Memoir incorrectly says 1803 (although 1805 can be inferred because it states he was 12 when he went to St Andrews University in 1817): G. Buist, Memoir, with Testimonials, &c. of George Buist, LL.D. Fellow of the Royal Society, London; Fellow of the Royal Society, Edinburgh; Fellow of the Geological Society; Member of the Royal Geographical Society, London; of the Royal Asiatic Society; of the Wernerian Society, Edinburgh; of the Society of Scottish Antiquaries, etc.; of the Royal Society of Arts; of the Bombay Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society; Secretary to the Geographical Society Bombay; Secretary to the Agri-Horticultural Society of Western India; Honorary Member of the Egyptian Literary Institution; Honorary Member of the St Andrews Literary and Philosophical Society; of the Fifeshire Literary, Scientific, and Antiquarian Association, etc. etc. Addressed to his Friends (Cupar: G. S. Tullis, 1846). His gravestone in Kolkata corroborates this, stating he died 1 October 1860, aged 54 10m 5d (‘India, Kolkata, Karaya Road, Scottish Cemetery’, in < www.canmore.rcahms.gov.uk> [accessed 3 August 2012]).

^45. A.J. Campbell, Cupar. The Years of Controversy. 1822–1872. Its Newspaper Press (Dunfermline: Fife Family History Society, 2009), pp. 42–45; K. Prior, ‘Buist, George (1804–1860)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), in www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/3892 [accessed 25 September 2012].

^46.Fife Herald, 14 November 1839, p. 3; Fifeshire Journal, 12 December 1838, p. 2.

^47. Prior, ‘Buist, George (1804–1860)’; G. Buist, ‘On the Scythian Bows and Bows of the Ancients, Compared with Those of India’, Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 1 (1851–54), 237–39.

^48. Buist, Report; Buist, ‘On the Ancient Sculptured Monument’; Muniments of the University of St Andrews UY8528/1/21(a); Muniments of the University of St Andrews UY8528/5, Binder of papers submitted to the St Andrews Literary and Philosophical Society (1814, 1839–29 June 1905); Fifeshire Journal, ‘Rhunic Antiquities’, 12 July 1838, p. 3; 14 November 1839, p. 4; Fife Herald, 14 November 1839, p. 4. Buist, Memoir.

^49. Buist, Memoir, p. ix.

^50.Fifeshire Journal, 19 April 1838, p. 3; 10 May 1838, p. 1.

^51. Rev George Scott, quoted in Buist, Memoir, p. 6.

^52. Crawford, The Beginning and the End, ch. 5.

^53. Nordbladh, ‘The Shape of History’, p. 243.

^54. Crawford, The Beginning and the End, ch. 6.

^55. For his photosensitive paper, he went to Rudolph Ackerman's shop on the Strand and purchased the ‘photogenic drawing box’ of material and Fox Talbot's instructions for producing ‘photogenic drawings’: ‘I have also taken a parcel of Ackermans photogenic paper purchased of Mr Fox Talbots instructions together with London lenses for a camera obscura – so as to try the effects of the tropical sun. I suppose I shall be the first to make the caves of Elephanta pourtray [sic] themselves – in which, if I succeed I shall send you specimens of the portraiture that you may compare them with Capt. Grindlay's coloured drawings of which you have a copy in the university library’ (Muniments of the University of St Andrews UY8528/5, 11 February 1840).

^56. R. Taylor, Impressed by Light: British Photographs from Paper Negatives, 1840–1860 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), ch. 9.

^57. R.D.E. Welander, ‘Recent Developments in Conservation and Presentation’, in The St Andrews Sarcophagus, ed. by Foster, pp. 63–70.

^58. See Foster, ‘Expiscation!’.

^59. A.S. Naik and M.C.H. Stewart, ‘The Hellenization of Edinburgh: Cityscape, Architecture, and the Athenian Cast Collection’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 3 (2007), 366–89.

^60. Buist, Report, p. 2.

^61. See M. Goldberg and A. Blackwell, ‘The Different Histories of the Norrie's Law Hoard’, in Making Histories, ed. by Hawkes, pp. 326–38, for details.

^62. See, for example, J.M. Leighton, History of the County of Fife from the Earliest to the Present Time (Glasgow: Brookman and Co., 1840), II, fig. facing p. 177.

^63. See contributions to The St Andrews Sarcophagus, ed. by Foster.

^64. D.V. Clarke, A. Blackwell and M. Goldberg, Early Medieval Scotland. Individuals, Communities and Ideas (Edinburgh: National Museums Scotland, 2012), pp. 45, 95.

^65. Cf. Nordbladh, ‘The Shape of History’, p. 243, and C. Evans, ‘Megalithic Follies: Soane's “Druidic Remains” and the Display of Monuments’, Journal of Material Culture, 3 (2000), 347–66 (pp. 354–55) on the ways in which illustrations in one visual media (2D and 3D) can have dependences and dependencies inherited from another, and the risks of ‘naïve acceptance’ of representations.

^66. D. Wilson, Prehistoric Annals of Scotland (1st edn; Edinburgh: Sutherland and Knox, 1851), p. 503, (2nd edn; London: MacMillan, 1863), vol. II, pl. xiv.

^67. C.L. Mowbray, ‘Eastern Influence on Carvings at St Andrews and Nigg, Scotland’, Antiquity, 10 (1936), 428–40, pls I–IV.

^68. See for example McCormick, ‘Crosses in Circulation’, ch. 3 (esp. pp. 90–94), of which scholars and museums were exchanging casts from as early as the 1840s.

^69. Foster, ‘Circulating Agency’.

^70. Ó Floinn ‘Reproducing the Past’, pp. 148, 152–54; Kelly, ‘“Specimens of Modern Antique”’.

^71. A. Way, Catalogue of the Antiquities, Works of Art and Historical Scottish Relics, Exhibited in the Museum of the Archaeological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland during their Annual Meeting, held in Edinburgh, July 1856 (Edinburgh: Thomas Constable, 1859), p. 153 fn.

^72. D. Bilbey and R. Cribb, ‘Plaster Models, Plaster Casts, Electrotypes and Fictile Ivories’, in The Making of Sculpture. The Materials and Techniques of European Sculpture, ed. by M. Trusted (London: V&A, 2007). pp. 152–71; Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851–1951, < www.sculpture.gla.ac.uk> [accessed 3 April 2012]; P. Malone, ‘How the Smiths made a living’, in R. Frederiksen and E. Marchand, Plaster Casts, pp. 163–77.

^73. Foster, ‘Expiscation!’.

^74. Foster, ‘Expiscation!’.

^75. Cf. I. Hodder, Entangled. An Archaeology of the Relationships between Humans and Things (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012).