Category: Research

By Jo Clements, former curator of the George Bain Collection

George Bain was a big collector of newspaper cuttings, but it is not always clear why he kept the cuttings or how he was involved in the activities being reported.

Take this 1948 press cutting featuring students from Latheron and Dunbeath in a picture of “the first Celtic art class in Caithness” – was Bain involved in the class? Or did he inspire it? Or was he simply interested in any Celtic art?

The newspaper cutting has quite a poor-quality picture in which it is hard to see the details, so I was delighted when I discovered the same group photographed in the Johnston Photographic Collection. Using the clearer image from the Johnston Photographic Collection, we can see that the two cushion covers highlighted in red boxes below are embroidered with the same interlaced design.

This particular design appears on plate 1 of George Bain’s book on knotwork panels – below. This panel is particularly interesting because Bain repeatedly calls attention to the difference between this panel and Pictish panels and states that he has created this simplified design for beginners. The use of this design on the cushion covers made by the Celtic art class shows that they had access to Bain’s work in some way.

Having discovered this link, I went back to the George Bain Collection to see if I could find links to any of the other cushion cover designs made by the Caithness class. Frustratingly, however, although the collection contains a wide selection of embroidery transfers – like those below – I was unable to find any that matched those in the photograph.

So the precise nature of the relationship between George Bain and the Caithness Celtic art class remains a mystery for now – but I am confident that sooner or later someone will find something in an attic in Caithness that will help us to solve the mystery!

By Jo Clements, former curator of the George Bain Collection

In September 1952, racing driver John Cobb attempted to break the World Water Speed Record on Loch Ness, near Drumnadrochit where George Bain was living at the time, setting up his College of Celtic Cultures.

In the crowds gathered along the side of the loch, George Bain set up with a sketch pad and conte crayon to record the event. Bain’s sketch from 19 September shows the view from Lower Lenie, cars parked on the side of the road, the roadside fence lined with people, barely space to squeeze between them. John Cobb’s boat, Crusader, is a dart of spray, shooting southwards down the loch (ROMGH.2006.235). Cobb attempted the record on the mile-long course every day for over a week, reaching speeds over 200 mph. It seems that Bain was out at the same spot sketching the attempt on at least one other day from a similar, yet subtly different sketch in the collection (ROMGH.2006.146).

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Unfortunately, on 29 September, the Crusader hit an unexpected wake in the water and the boat disintegrated, killing Cobb. The moment was captured on film in this newsreel from Pathé.

Although John Cobb’s body was recovered from the loch and taken to Surrey to be buried, the Glen Urquhart Rural Community Association decided that a memorial cairn should be erected by Loch Ness. George Bain’s design for a plaque for the cairn was chosen by the committee and recommended to Mrs Cobb and John Cobb’s trustees, who approved of the design (ROMGH.2006.61).

The plaque shows the Crusader surging through the water with the text:

On the waters of Loch Ness
John Cobb
having travelled at
206 miles per hour
in an attempt to gain the
World’s Water
Speed Record
lost his life
in this bay
Sept. 29th 1952.
This memorial is erected as a tribute
to the memory of a gallant gentleman
by the people of Glen Urquhart.
Urram do’n treun
agus do’n iriosal (honour to the brave and to the humble).

In this plaster cast of the design (ROMGH.1999.362), Bain’s love of Celtic art shows in the interlace border, the subtle interlace integrated into the letters of John Cobb’s name, and the letter forms of the rest of the text. Yet overall, the plaque is restrained – the text sits soberly on a blank background, without the exuberance of pattern and symbol of much of Bain’s other work.

Seeing this piece alongside the rest of Bain’s work in the George Bain Collection somehow increases its sense of gravity, but I wonder whether the restraint was rather a pragmatic decision – Bain knew that his design would have to appeal to people who were not as invested in Celtic art as he was. In contrast, the memorial plaque he designed for his wife, Jessie Mackintosh, five years later, is crammed with pattern.

The memorial plaque was installed on a cairn alongside the road and unveiled by Eileen Holloway, John Cobb’s sister. Bain carefully cut out and kept the newspaper reports (ROMGH.2005.5.8.25.2). You can still visit the memorial cairn today – follow the A82 south of Urquhart Castle and park in the first layby on the west side of the road, the memorial is just across the road.

It never ceases to amaze me how many of our visitors turn out to possess one of George Bain’s ‘Hunting’ or ‘Hebridean’ rugs or carpets. I can see why these two exhuberantly patterned, bright designs remain popular. However, we know that Bain made more designs for rugs and carpets. Groam House Museum volunteer Alastair Morton has been trying to track them down.

In the George Bain Collection there are quite a number of objects that relate to Bain’s work of creating Celtic designs for rugs and carpets.

Following the 1939-45 war Bain was approached by the Kidderminster carpet firm of Quayle and Tranter to produce some Celtic designs for rugs. In 1949 he agreed to become a special adviser and consultant on Celtic design. It suited Bain to also give the company the right to use the “guarantee” mark of his College of Celtic Cultures. It was used with every design that was commercially produced.

As a Groam House volunteer I have embarked on an informal project to expand as far as possible the museum’s knowledge and understanding of Bain’s work in this area. A good starting point seemed to be trying to achieve a complete inventory of all the designs he supplied and confirmation of which designs were commercially produced as rugs or carpets. Whilst the museum already possesses several examples of actual rugs, it would be good to know of which other designs it should be seeking examples to acquire in the future.

Amongst the relevant objects in the collection are three handwritten lists by Bain of the various designs he supplied to the company. For the most part they concur but not completely. My work to date has been to take the list which seems most comprehensive and try to identify images of the designs described. This process has been made easier and more successful by the fact that the museum has photographs, taken by former curator Susan Seright, of items in the possession of Mr Cedric Quayle, the son of Stephen Quayle who dealt with George Bain in the 1950s.

So far, out of 22 different designs or design groups listed by Bain, 15 have been able to be associated with images, either definitively or with a good degree of probability – like those pictured below. The remainder may yet be identified either through further work on the collection or through further discussions with Mr Quayle. Already we are a lot further forward than we were !

A good example of the discoveries to be made during the project is the design which Bain describes as “Knotwork repeat with Ulbster stone etc. “ supplied on 22^nd March 1948. While scanning drawings in the Collection for a digitisation project I recognised one as fitting the description. This drawing had not previously been associated with Bain’s rug designs but the annotations “No 14” and “Suggested title “Ulbster” ” now made more sense.