Name/TitleMaryhill Burgh Halls Panel: The Linen Bleachers
About this objectPrint on wood panel: originally labelled 'The Linen Bleachers', this reproduction of a stained glass panel by Stephen Adam is now believed to depict two women in a large-scale laundry or bleachworks, as the cloth for calico printing was stained rather than bleached. See Subject and Association Description for more details.
Place MadeScotland, Glasgow
Medium and MaterialsOrganic, wood
MeasurementsH: 272 x W: 272 x D: 14 mm
Subject and Association Keywordswomen's work & labour
Subject and Association Keywordstextile industry
Subject and Association Descriptionhttps://www.maryhillburghhalls.org.uk/panels:
Maryhill Burgh Halls contained twenty stained glass panels created by the studio of Adam and Small. This studio was set up in Glasgow by Stephen Adam in 1870 and the company produced possibly the most significant examples of Scottish stained glass for the next four decades, until Adam's death in 1910. The contribution of Adam's work at that time cannot be underestimated. He is recognised as an internationally important artist in the field of stained glass design and production.
Stephen Adam was born near Edinburgh in 1847 and in 1862 was apprenticed to James Ballantine of Edinburgh, at that time the leading firm working in stained glass in Scotland. They were the leading company in the revival of the craft in Scotland in the latter half of the 19th century.
The realism of the portrayals of the industries and trades in the Maryhill Windows is in marked contrast to Adam’s other stained glass treatments of similar subjects. His windows for Glasgow City Chambers (1882-90) include depictions of workmen, but these are portrayed in classical clothing and poses: at Aberdeen Trinity Hall (1893), the figures are shown in Biblical and medieval settings; and at the Clyde Navigation Trust Building (1905-08) the industries are represented by classical nymphs or goddesses and the workmen and traders at the docks in late-medieval/Renaissance clothes. Only at Maryhill were real people depicted as they really were, in their everyday working clothes.
The stained glass was removed from the building in 1963, and has been in the care of Glasgow Museums ever since. The refurbishment and re-opening of the building in 2012 has allowed 11 of the original panels to be returned to their original location in the Main Hall for display, alongside ten modern Windows of Today.
THE LINEN BLEACHERS
A bleachworks was founded on Maryhill Road (the part then called New City Road) in 1855, but this was within the Glasgow City boundaries, and it engaged in chemical bleaching without bleachfields. There was a linen bleachfield at Dalsholm in the eighteenth century, but this was moved to the Vale of Leven in 1770. There was only one linen mill of any size in Glasgow by Adam’s time, at St Rollox and it didn’t use bleachfields either. It may have been a cotton bleachfield, for the Kelvindale Mills, but cotton was also bleached chemically by the 1870s. A possibility is that this is an historical image, relating to Maryhill’s pre-1870 past, a lapse from the pattern of the other panels, which show contemporary workplace situations.
Named CollectionGlasgow Women's Library
Object TypePrint
Object numberGWL-2017-10-1
Copyright LicenceAll rights reserved