Newsletter No 28 Summer/Autumn 2008 He is currently working on a book on the nineteenth- From the Chair century travel photographer Baron Raimund von Stillfried. Welcome to the first of our new shorter-but- hopefully-more-frequent newsletters! The main casualty has been the listings section, which is no New SSAH Grant Scheme longer included. Apologies to those of you who found this useful but it takes absolutely ages to compile and As you’ll know from last issue, we recently launched a the information should all be readily available scheme offering research support grants from £50 to elsewhere. Otherwise you should still find the same £300 to assist with research costs and travel mix of SSAH news and general features – if you have expenses. We’re delighted to say that several any comments on the newsletter or would like to applications have already been received and so far we contribute to future issues, please let us know! have awarded five grants to researchers from around Now, let’s waste no more time and get on the world. Here we present the first two reports with the latest news… from grant recipients on how the money has been Matthew Jarron spent. Committee News Gabriel Montua, Humboldt-Universität Berlin, Germany As promised last issue, we present a profile of our newest committee member: The generous SSAH grant of £206.96 enabled me to cover my travel expanses to the Scottish National Luke Gartlan Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh, where I consulted item GMA A42/1/GKA008 from the Luke is a lecturer in the School of Art History at the Gabrielle Keiller Collection: letters exchanged University of St Andrews, where he currently teaches between Salvador Dalí and André Breton. The modules on orientalism and nineteenth-century Edinburgh letters consist of those Breton wrote to photography. He received his doctoral degree at the Dalí, with the important exception of a draft from University of Melbourne in 2004 and has held Dalí. The letters Dalí actually sent to Breton are kept postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Vienna in the Bibliothèque Littéraire Jacques Doucet in Paris, (2004-05) and Nihon University, Japan (2005-2007). which I will visit in July. Very few scholars have Luke recently arrived in Scotland to take up consulted both parts of the correspondence. My PhD his new post on the completion of his research in thesis analyses the dialogue between Dalí’s self- Tokyo, funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion fashioning and its reception by society. Dalí of Science. He specialises in the early history of deliberately obscured his membership in the Surrealist photography in East Asia, and is particularly interested Movement in writings and public comments, which in the camera’s role in colonial-period visual culture. leads scholars to a great variety of views on this 1 subject. The analysis of the integral correspondence between Dalí and the head of the Surrealists, Breton, Features therefore is of vital interest for a better understanding of Dalí’s implication with the Movement. The final The Carron Restaurant, Stonehaven: An Art results of the whole correspondence will become Deco Jewel clear only after the consultation of the second set of letters in Paris this summer. Robin Jackson describes the restoration and unique artistic features of this architectural gem. Carly Eck, Shirley, England Despite the visual resonance of modernity, after having drawn upon examples from Parisian Couture, British mass produced and Fair Isle jumpers, my research argues that sweaters of the 1920s were entrenched with tradition. The very representation of a knitted garment, even if machine-made, is a representation of an archaic and ancestral technique. The notion of fashion folding back on itself is something which Caroline Evans refers to as a labyrinth, the most new having a relation to what is most old. This in itself can appear contradictory from the very nature of fashion, which breaks from the past and can be thought of as a Figure 1 – The Carron Restaurant, southern aspect reaction to what went before, though by breaking Courtesy of Robin Jackson from what directly came before, it can delve back further. This is what Walter Benjamin describes as the I think I can claim to have some inkling of how tiger-leap. The ‘tiger’s leap’ allows fashion to Howard Carter must have felt when he entered the transcend from the old to the new. Tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922! That may sound like The hand-knitted Fair Isle jumpers re- journalistic hyperbole but let me explain. In 1996 I appropriated a technique dating to the sixteenth was looking for a possible location in Stonehaven for a century and were re-represented as new, but did not projected training restaurant for adults with special inject the novel, after being popularised by the Prince needs. I was told that there was a large storeroom of Wales in 1922. Modernity can be thought of as a belonging to a supermarket that might become purveyor of discontinuity and in order to assert the available and be suitable - that storeroom had break from continuity, there has to be awareness of formerly been part of a building housing the long what came before. This is paradoxical in itself; the closed Carron Restaurant. notion of trajectory, simultaneous to nostalgia for a I recall as I walked down the corridor leading lost time. Paradox is a fundamental facet to modernity to the storeroom I had neither high nor low and indeed the supposedly ‘modern’ sweaters of the expectations. On opening the storeroom door I was 1920s that do not eschew the past. confronted by row after row of storage shelves The SSAH grant of £70 was used to pay for containing tins of fruit, detergent and cereal packets, my travel and attendance to the Pasold Conference and sundry other items. At first nothing struck me as on 14 th March 2008, entitled, ‘The History, being out of the ordinary. It was, after all, just a drab Production and Representation of Knitted Textiles in and dusty storeroom. However when I turned to my Scotland.’ This was most beneficial to my left I saw at the end of the storeroom a long understanding of the role that Fair Isle and Shetland rectangular mirror upon which had been etched an knitting played for the islands. elegant female nude. On either side of the mirror were two tall columns decorated with inch square For further information on the SSAH grant scheme, glass tiles. The visual effect of the mirror and contact: tessellated columns was absolutely stunning. But then Daniel F. Herrmann as I looked around the room I became aware of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art fact that it was full of art deco features. As someone 75 Belford Road, Edinburgh EH4 3DR with a love for the art deco period I felt as if I had [email protected] stumbled on buried treasure. This was my Howard 2 Carter moment! It soon became clear that the could be saved. It was not long after the BBC2 storeroom and adjoining kitchen and toilets were just programme was transmitted that John Morrison, a as they had been when the building was originally put local councillor and builder, purchased the building up. My reactions to this surprise discovery were and succeeded in restoring it to its former splendour mixed. On the one hand, there was my sheer delight and glory. The Carron reopened in 2001. in discovering such an art deco jewel but on the other hand, I was perplexed how such a treasure could have Features of the Carron Restaurant been left to fall into such a sorry state. My immediate reaction was to write an article Inspection of the Carron makes one fact abundantly for The Mearns Leader in which I invited readers to clear. The Carron is a celebration of art deco style. answer three questions: How many Stonehaven The architect responsible for its design was obviously residents know that they have in their town a rare intimately aware of what constituted art deco style – architectural gem? How many of those who know down to its smallest detail. Any visitor to the care? And how many of those who care are prepared Restaurant will immediately be made aware of the to act to preserve this treasure? extent to which the style permeates every aspect of this unique building’s exterior and interior design. Origin of the Carron Restaurant The Carron Restaurant was opened on the 24 th July 1937. It was part of the extended and re-modelled Northern Co-operative Society premises on Evan Street that were then seen as the last word in modernity and business efficiency. There is some evidence to suggest that the Evan Street store with its grocery, butchery, bakery, drapery, shoe shop and pharmacy, was one of the first supermarkets in Scotland. An extract from The Mearns Leader for June 24 th 1937 conveys some of the excitement felt at the time of the opening of the restaurant: “In the midst of all this perfection there stands out a chef d’oeuvre – the tearoom which is, without exaggeration, the finest to be found in the North of Scotland. Indeed, nothing so delightful in the way of tearooms has ever been attempted Figure 2 – Restaurant interior even in larger towns and cities". Courtesy of Robin Jackson In the two years before the outbreak of the war, the Exterior design Carron became the social and cultural centre of Stonehaven catering for weddings, birthdays, whist The south facing and publicly visible facade of the drives, bridge parties, dances and concerts.