The House is owned by the 21st Lady of Traquair, Catherine Maxwell Stuart. It was once a hunting lodge for the Kings of Queens of Scotland - 27 have visited including Mary Queen of Scots who stayed in 1566 with her baby son James. We were able to see the room she stayed in. The walls are adorned with paintings of the Earls of Traquair.
In the Museum there is a mural covering one wall which dates from 1530. It depicts a hound and a dromedary (camel) and two quotes from the Acts of the Apostles.
The Priests room contains a display of colourful vestments and chasubles which are in very good condition. It also contains a secret staircase, hidden behind shelves of books, used as an escape route for Catholic priests.
Catherine Maxwell Stuart lead one of the activities which was to analyse the display of objects, including embroideries and needlework, and priests vestments, within the museum space and provide feedback.
On Saturday the Archivist gave a talk on the house archives and laid out on the table items, mostly letters, from their collection. One of them dated back to the late 1400s.
I found these very interesting. The 4th Countess of Traquair had 17 children and all of them survived which was rare in those days. One of the items is a document where she lists each child - their name and date of birth. From 1695 to 1711 she had one child every year except for when she had twins in which case she would have a year off.
There are three documents of Mary Queen of Scots within the archives and there was one document on display.
We got given a task to write a museum label for a particular document. There were certain parameters we had to follow - it had to be concise so less than 150 words, and no more than 12 words per sentence, and trying to avoid large clauses and subclauses.
No comments:
Post a Comment