Since 2014, the National Library’s Public Programmes team have been regularly working with Edinburgh College of Art (ECA) Illustration tutors and their 1st Year students on an annual collaborative project. Taking inspiration from different aspects of the National Library’s collections, the students have created Riso prints, linocuts, drawings and paper sculptures as part of their […]
Tag: broadsides
A Scottish penny wedding
We have bought a Belfast-printed broadside (AP.el.214.02) entitled ‘A Scottish penny wedding’ dating from the 1840s. It contains a large wood engraving printed from nine individual blocks. The illustration shows a lively wedding scene in a barn with the bride and groom dancing to fiddle music and guests eating and drinking merrily. There were three […]
A satire about a Prime Minister
We have bought an very unusual satirical broadside (AP.6.213.06): it attacks the unpopular Prime Minister John Stuart, third Earl of Bute (1713-1792). It’s written in the form of a letter from Beelzebub, or the Devil, to the Earl of Bute. At the top is a portrait of Lord Bute, which, unusually, is not a caricature but is a faithful representation of […]
Anti-slavery Campaign in Haddington
We recently bought an abolitionist broadside printed in Haddington, East Lothian, in 1814 – seven years after the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act was passed. It is simply entitled Slave Trade. Beneath the title is a telling woodcut followed by an abolitionist poem: The inhabitants of Dunbar, a coastal town in East Lothian, had met in June 1814 […]