I think mutton has to always be top left, as it's probably the "most authentic" meat accompaniment if you think about the likely origins of the dish and what people ate. Barfit is a sound central square occupant as it's the starting point around which all other Stovies are built
Corned beef is chaotic as it effectively collapses into a meaty mush when you add it to the pan. Haggis is evil because it is haggis (for the record, I'm very keen on haggis, but it's still evil).
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Found this absolutely brilliant early 19th c. watercolour on the National Galleries site in the course of my daily rummaging (nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artist…) of the Water of Leith at Bonnington, looking towards Edinburgh. It is by John Harden and is date April 1809.
It's not a view you can get any more because of subsequent building, but it's full of details of industrial Leith at the beginning of the 19th c. The artist is sitting where the garages on Graham Street are, looking southeast
The main feature that dominates the foreground is Haig's distillery at Bonnington. Built in 1798 as one of the new fangled grain distilleries. You can see the cowls of malt houses, the vertical still tower etc.
I'm assuming there are magazines that actually recommend painting, papering and draping everything in only grey and white.
I thought hard about whether to bother about this. But it's just incredible. That poor fruit bowl, fighting hard but thoroughly losing the battle to brighten the place up.
I retweeted earlier about the "Great Michael", a warship launched on this day in 1509 for the Royal Navy of King James IV of Scotland. It's an intriguing tale of national extravagance and the very founding of Newhaven itself.
So how did a relatively small and unprosperous nation like 16th century Scotland come to build the largest warship in the western world at the time, and how did it come to be built in a sleepy little fishing village with no previous history in shipbuilding?
The answer lies with this man, King James IV of Scotland. James had a bit of an obsession with building up a navy for Scotland, you might say in modern terms it was a bit of a strategic policy.
Today's auction site artefact is this Basil Spence chair. Not your typical bit of Spencarania!
"for H. Morris & Co. Allegro armchair, laminated wood and leather upholstery. In 1947 Morris of Glasgow asked Spence to collaborate on a range of plywood furniture, which was to include his Bambi chair and celebrated Cloud table. The result was the Allegro dining suite"
"awarded a diploma by the Council of Industrial Design in January 1949. In March of the same year it was exhibited at the Glasgow Today and Tomorrow, where it was commended, and an example of the armchair was commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art, New York"
Today's auction house artefact is this Leith Banking Company £20 note from 1825, issued to the payee James Ker
James Ker of Blackshiels esq. was the general manager of the Leith Banking Co. and lived at a fine Georgian townhouse at no. 24 Royal Circus
So it's rather unusual that a note made out to Ker is also signed on behalf of the bank by... Ker! He was issuing his own pocket money (and that's what it literally was, paper money that a gentleman could carry on his person)