Sarah Laurenson
I am Principal Curator of Modern and Contemporary History and Head of the Modern and Contemporary History Section at National Museums Scotland. I am responsible for the Scottish collections representing cultural, social, political, military and domestic history from c.1750 to the present.
My broad research interests span the period of Scottish history from 1750 to the present day with an emphasis on Scottish cultures and identities, and on the ways in which shifting engagement with the physical landscape and natural environment has shaped – and continues to shape – the material world. My doctoral thesis from the University of Edinburgh, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, examined Scotland’s jewellery craft from 1780 to 1914. My forthcoming book expands on this research with a particular focus on how the use of jewellery materials extracted from Scotland’s natural landscapes – namely precious metals, agates and crystals, and freshwater pearls – throw light on the complex and shifting relationships between people and the natural world since the mid-eighteenth century.
Other research interests include: the relationship between people, objects and environments in the Highlands and Islands, and the material culture and contemporary legacies of Scotland's colonial histories. In 2018-19, I was co-Investigator on the project, The Matter of Slavery in Scotland, funded by the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
I joined National Museums Scotland in 2017 when I was appointed as Curator of Modern and Contemporary History, and was made Senior Curator in 2020. During this time, I had specific responsibilities for developing the Scottish History & Archaeology Department’s innovative contemporary collecting programme, which documents the impact of social, cultural, political and environmental change in twenty-first century Scotland.
I am Chair of the National Museums Scotland Contemporary Collecting Working Group, a Trustee of the Scottish Goldsmiths Trust, a member of the Historical Committee of the Incorporation of Goldsmiths of the City of Edinburgh, and a member of the Advisory Board for the George Bain Collection at Groam House Museum.
I supervise Laura Scobie’s doctoral research on the material culture of Scottish whisky. Laura’s work is funded by the AHRC as a Collaborative Doctoral Project (CDP) in partnership with the University of Edinburgh. I am shortly due to launch another of these CDP projects, focused on Gaelic material cultures in collaboration with Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, University of the Highlands and Islands: ‘Cultar Dùthchasach: Materialising Gaelic Cultures in 21st-Century Scotland’.
Address: Edinburgh
My broad research interests span the period of Scottish history from 1750 to the present day with an emphasis on Scottish cultures and identities, and on the ways in which shifting engagement with the physical landscape and natural environment has shaped – and continues to shape – the material world. My doctoral thesis from the University of Edinburgh, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, examined Scotland’s jewellery craft from 1780 to 1914. My forthcoming book expands on this research with a particular focus on how the use of jewellery materials extracted from Scotland’s natural landscapes – namely precious metals, agates and crystals, and freshwater pearls – throw light on the complex and shifting relationships between people and the natural world since the mid-eighteenth century.
Other research interests include: the relationship between people, objects and environments in the Highlands and Islands, and the material culture and contemporary legacies of Scotland's colonial histories. In 2018-19, I was co-Investigator on the project, The Matter of Slavery in Scotland, funded by the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
I joined National Museums Scotland in 2017 when I was appointed as Curator of Modern and Contemporary History, and was made Senior Curator in 2020. During this time, I had specific responsibilities for developing the Scottish History & Archaeology Department’s innovative contemporary collecting programme, which documents the impact of social, cultural, political and environmental change in twenty-first century Scotland.
I am Chair of the National Museums Scotland Contemporary Collecting Working Group, a Trustee of the Scottish Goldsmiths Trust, a member of the Historical Committee of the Incorporation of Goldsmiths of the City of Edinburgh, and a member of the Advisory Board for the George Bain Collection at Groam House Museum.
I supervise Laura Scobie’s doctoral research on the material culture of Scottish whisky. Laura’s work is funded by the AHRC as a Collaborative Doctoral Project (CDP) in partnership with the University of Edinburgh. I am shortly due to launch another of these CDP projects, focused on Gaelic material cultures in collaboration with Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, University of the Highlands and Islands: ‘Cultar Dùthchasach: Materialising Gaelic Cultures in 21st-Century Scotland’.
Address: Edinburgh
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Books by Sarah Laurenson
A beautiful and informative sourcebook, Shetland Textiles: 800 BC to the Present will inspire, educate and inform researchers, designers and anyone who is interested in how a tiny archipelago in the North Sea came to be world renowned for its textiles.
Individual authors: Lynn Abrams, Roslyn Chapman, Carol Christiansen, Martin Ciszuk, Sarah Dearlove, Lena Hammarlund, Elizabeth Johnston, Sarah Laurenson and Brian Smith.
Journal articles by Sarah Laurenson
Conference papers by Sarah Laurenson
Drawing on jewellery artefacts, portraits and documentary sources, this paper traces the life cycle of native pearls in nineteenth-century Scotland, from their watery origins in the landscape through the jeweller’s workshop to worn objects. The people involved at each stage of the transformation from natural to cultural – pearl fishers, craftsmen-retailers and owner-wearers – are considered to explore how stories of past and place embedded within pearls connected makers and buyers, and shaped ideas of the self. By unlocking evidence from objects made at different points during the nineteenth century, we see how the meanings of these rare and precious materials, and the ways in which they were crafted, consumed and worn, shifted over time. These subtle shifts shed light on the role of materials and making processes in shaping how crafted things were designed, made, used and passed on.
Using historical artefacts and documentary sources, this paper reconstructs a picture of Scotland’s jewellery workshops in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Examining change over time, the paper unlocks the myths and realities of the workshop to show how making spaces provide evidence of the changing relationship between artisans and their work during industrialisation. In taking this approach, the paper offers new perspectives on the idea of craft consciousness and the property of skill. It is argued that the workshop can be considered not just a space where tools, techniques and skill were brought to bear on materials, but as a way in to understanding the embodied experiences of making that were central to shaping the social and cultural identities of Britain’s artisans.
Animal parts and products were a key feature of Scottish jewellery design during the Victorian era. Claws of rare Scottish birds, rabbit feet, and pearls from scarce freshwater mussels were fashioned into jewellery artefacts. These animal materials transformed the human body into a site of meanings associated with the natural world, and switched the imagination on to romanticised scenes of Highland landscapes.
Using portraits, surviving artefacts and design records, this paper explores the making and wearing of animal ‘specimens’ as jewellery to consider subtle shifts in subject-object and human-animal relations. The paper considers the wearing of animal materials in luxury objects by men and women of all social classes to demonstrate how their symbolic and cultural significance shifted across time. Examples include: wealthy aristocrats who layered furs and rare native pearls to express gender identities rooted in ideas of land ownership and power; and working people who wore bird claws speared with native stones as tokens of love and affection.
By looking at use and wear alongside the design and making of this form of jewellery, including registered patents for taxidermy brooches, the paper shows that these animal things were valued for their origins in vast, wild landscapes. They were used to express status, to signal a distinctively Victorian wanderlust, and to function as an antidote to industrialisation and urbanisation. Worn on the body, these artefacts contained complex and often conflicting ideas about what was considered to be rare and precious, and about the power of humans over the natural world.
The paper was presented at The Costume Society's 'The Power of Gold' conference at the V&A in London, July 2015.
Magazine articles and blog posts by Sarah Laurenson
Talks by Sarah Laurenson
Papers by Sarah Laurenson
A beautiful and informative sourcebook, Shetland Textiles: 800 BC to the Present will inspire, educate and inform researchers, designers and anyone who is interested in how a tiny archipelago in the North Sea came to be world renowned for its textiles.
Individual authors: Lynn Abrams, Roslyn Chapman, Carol Christiansen, Martin Ciszuk, Sarah Dearlove, Lena Hammarlund, Elizabeth Johnston, Sarah Laurenson and Brian Smith.
Drawing on jewellery artefacts, portraits and documentary sources, this paper traces the life cycle of native pearls in nineteenth-century Scotland, from their watery origins in the landscape through the jeweller’s workshop to worn objects. The people involved at each stage of the transformation from natural to cultural – pearl fishers, craftsmen-retailers and owner-wearers – are considered to explore how stories of past and place embedded within pearls connected makers and buyers, and shaped ideas of the self. By unlocking evidence from objects made at different points during the nineteenth century, we see how the meanings of these rare and precious materials, and the ways in which they were crafted, consumed and worn, shifted over time. These subtle shifts shed light on the role of materials and making processes in shaping how crafted things were designed, made, used and passed on.
Using historical artefacts and documentary sources, this paper reconstructs a picture of Scotland’s jewellery workshops in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Examining change over time, the paper unlocks the myths and realities of the workshop to show how making spaces provide evidence of the changing relationship between artisans and their work during industrialisation. In taking this approach, the paper offers new perspectives on the idea of craft consciousness and the property of skill. It is argued that the workshop can be considered not just a space where tools, techniques and skill were brought to bear on materials, but as a way in to understanding the embodied experiences of making that were central to shaping the social and cultural identities of Britain’s artisans.
Animal parts and products were a key feature of Scottish jewellery design during the Victorian era. Claws of rare Scottish birds, rabbit feet, and pearls from scarce freshwater mussels were fashioned into jewellery artefacts. These animal materials transformed the human body into a site of meanings associated with the natural world, and switched the imagination on to romanticised scenes of Highland landscapes.
Using portraits, surviving artefacts and design records, this paper explores the making and wearing of animal ‘specimens’ as jewellery to consider subtle shifts in subject-object and human-animal relations. The paper considers the wearing of animal materials in luxury objects by men and women of all social classes to demonstrate how their symbolic and cultural significance shifted across time. Examples include: wealthy aristocrats who layered furs and rare native pearls to express gender identities rooted in ideas of land ownership and power; and working people who wore bird claws speared with native stones as tokens of love and affection.
By looking at use and wear alongside the design and making of this form of jewellery, including registered patents for taxidermy brooches, the paper shows that these animal things were valued for their origins in vast, wild landscapes. They were used to express status, to signal a distinctively Victorian wanderlust, and to function as an antidote to industrialisation and urbanisation. Worn on the body, these artefacts contained complex and often conflicting ideas about what was considered to be rare and precious, and about the power of humans over the natural world.
The paper was presented at The Costume Society's 'The Power of Gold' conference at the V&A in London, July 2015.