This year’s Special Collections Christmas party was slightly different to the usual festive celebration, as we continued to follow our Historical How-To theme. We brought… Read More »52 Weeks of Historical How-To’s, Week 9: Special Collections Christmas Party Part I
When we first started talking about cooking our way through the collections, one of the early ideas was to make mincemeat for Christmas following an… Read More »52 Weeks of Historical How-To’s, Week 8: The Great Mince Pie Bake Off
We bought this recipe book at auction recently, and it arrived with no provenance information. However, from the names and places mentioned, I have worked… Read More »52 Weeks of Historical How-To’s, Week 2: Mrs Edwards’s cook book
T’was a dark and stormy night….no, honestly, it really was….when a gallant band of Special Collections and friends set out in full costume, accompanied by… Read More »52 Weeks of Historical How-To’s, Week 1: Special Collections Ghost tour
Over the past couple of years we’ve had themes for weekly blog posts throughout the year, beginning with the very popular 52 Weeks of Fantastic… Read More »Introducing this year’s blog theme: 52 weeks of Historical How-To’s!
I didn’t intend to write about the gradual at all for this post, I just happened to be looking at it one day when it… Read More »52 Weeks of Inspiring Illustrations, Week 43: Faces, fauna, flora and St Francis: funny things lurking in a medieval music manuscript
These vibrant illustrations of the Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ and angels come from an Ethiopian psalter purchased for Special Collections last summer. Ethiopia is one… Read More »52 Weeks of Inspiring Illustrations, Week 38: Angels, Madonnas and Pilgrims — an Ethiopian treasure
These beautiful hand-painted pictures of tortoises and turtles were created by Scottish naturalist John Anderson (1833-1900). They feature reptiles found in India, Ceylon and Burma,… Read More »52 Weeks of Inspiring Illustrations, Week 31: John Anderson’s tortoises and turtles
Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, the renowned Scottish abstract artist, has been attracting a lot of attention this year, with several recent events to celebrate the centenary of her birth. She was… Read More »Wilhelmina Barns-Graham: artist’s life celebrated
Regular users of Special Collections will know that over the last 5 years or so we have been promising that our new Archive Catalogue was… Read More »At last! New Archive Catalogue finally online
We couldn’t resist celebrating St Andrews day with some ‘inspiring illustrations’ of our eponym himself. The cult of St Andrew was actively pursued in Scotland… Read More »52 Weeks of Inspiring Illustrations, Week 23: Images of St Andrew
Here’s a Hallowe’en treat from Special Collections at St Andrews! Featured below is the manuscript poem for Andrew Lang‘s “Ballade of a choice of ghosts”… Read More »Happy Hallowe’en! Andrew Lang’s own illustrated copy of “Ballade of a choice of ghosts”
