Anderson 1936 catalogue

[ThistleDown]

Well, we historians have to work with the sources we have. It would be irresponsible in my opinion to throw out the sources that do exist, and place our stock in theoretical sources.

BTW these catalogues are of brick-and-mortar shops which anyone could walk into and see the things in person... no one had to order "blind".

Perhaps you are aware that historians are now including oral histories as major resources at least as valuable as written documents. I chair such a university program.

My point, however, was that all the catalogues we are discussing are from Lowland cities -- and many of the finest examples of Highland dress in our museums and private collections were made by indivuidual craftspeople in the Highland towns and townships. Even as recently as the early forties, travel from the Highlands to cities such as Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow was infrequent and chaallenging. To visit a shop selling mass-produced products considered inferior to those made nearby was thought of as a foolish waste of time and money. In those days Tain and Inverness, for example, had their own proofmarks to apply to one-off works of art. But no catalogues. We must not ignore them because they had no catalogues to send far-off potential customers; they were the major suppliers to Highlanders.