Edinburgh & Kellie Castle

Edinburgh

Aren't you all lucky - you get a cultural two'fer today! This weekend was chock-a-bock full of culture and adventure for me and my art history friends. I saw old stained glass and Yoda flying, I ate at the birthplace of Harry Potter, I met the TARDIS and roamed through a castle. All in just two days. Not bad, I'd say. So that means two things for you all, dear readers: first that there are a LOT of pictures to sift through on my flickr page, but I'll post the best ones here; Second, that you have a lot of reading ahead. Stick with it for some culture straight to your brains.

National Museum of Scotland entrance, ground level

On Saturday I visited Edinburgh with one of my professors' undergraduate classes. Three of us post-grads went with the bus: Kate, Jane, and myself. June and Christie, two other postgrads, met us there. The trip there is about an hour and a half by car or bus. It took us a little bit longer to get there because the motorway was unavailable for drivers so it funneled them all into the road we were on.

Inside the National Museum of Scotland

Eventually we got to the Scottish National Museum and went into an exhibit about Catherine the Great. I'm ashamed to say that I don't know much about her, but I'm not very interested in her to start with. After the exhibit, I still didn't know much about her because I didn't pay much attention - again, not very interested.
After that we walked around (Kate, Jane, June, and Christie) looking at Exhibits. We were supposed to see things that related to our class about William Morris, so we spent some time looking at Arts and Crafts such as pottery, tapestries, glass, but I didn't feel like there was much relevant to William Morris. The building was very interesting: the galleries all extended off of this wide open space, sort of in the shape of a race track, oval, and one would walk around the edges and could look down the middle to the ground floor.

The Elephant House - The birthplace of Harry Potter! (Death place of my lunchtime hunger pangs)

We were all getting a bit hungry by this time, so we went to lunch at a cafe called The Elephant House, which we were happy to find out is the Birthplace of Harry Potter. The cafe was also filled with elephants. Not real ones, because that would be absurd, but there were chairs shaped like elephants and figurines and books and paintings everywhere. I got a tasty panini - mozzarella, pesto, and olive.

Above: Kate and June. Below: Jane and Me

After that we walked to St. Giles Cathedral, which dates from the 14th century and was extensively restored in the 19th century. It's a beautiful cathedral that has been undergoing renovations. There is an enormous organ - believe me, I checked out the pipes on that organ - also amazing and varied stained glass, chapels for prayer, and a number of lovely statues. Outside the cathedral, the beautiful crown steeple is one of the prominent features of the city skyline.

St. Giles Cathedral, west facade

I am doing a seminar paper on Morris & Co. stained glass, and inside the castle was one stained glass window by the artist Edward Burne-Jones, who worked for the company and was very close friends with Morris.  The Cathedral is along High Street, which is very touristy. I think if you take the road west, it leads to Edinburgh Castle, which I really wanted to see but there was no time. Along the road, we also saw a lot of street performers and shops selling jewelry and bags. One performer was dressed up as Yoda and was hovering off the ground! There has to be a trick behind it, but I can't for the life of me figure it out! We also saw a blue police call box, aka the TARDIS, and had a stranger take our picture in front of it. They said to us "You want me to take your picture in front of the police box?" Obviously they haven't seen Doctor Who.

Looking into St. Giles Cathedral

With only about an hour left in our trip, we went to Dovecot studios, which is a weaving studio in a building that used to house a swimming pool. The weavings were beautiful but in the same vein as the Catherine the Great exhibit, I wasn't really interested. William Morris did a lot of weaving, so it was relevant to the class, but it was just too removed to be very relevant. After walking quickly through the exhibit, Kate and I went to the coffee shop attached. I got the cutest latte, and I know, coffee does not usually end up being "cute", but they did a little leaf design on top and it was wrapped in a cozy little knitted sleeve. Now that's adorable. After this we headed back to St. Andrews and we saw a really amazing rainbow on the way home. Probably the best one I've ever seen, which was a nice end to a lovely day.

Kellie Castle

Today I went to Kellie Castle where photography is not allowed, so of course, I hope you enjoy the photos I took! Granted, its only prohibited inside the castle, and I only knew that after I had snapped a few shots. So I didn't do anything wrong, right? The Castle is located just outside Arncroach. It wasn't as grand as I expected - it was more of a large stone house. But the grounds were lovely - gardens in the back of the castle and vast fields out front. It was all very nice and serene.

Dining Room of Kellie Castle. You can see the Chinese soapstone across the room above the fireplace. The other fireplace with the Delft tiles is to the right of this photo.

The castle dates back to the 14th century (wikipedia says 1150 but I'm not sure if they're correct). It was built in three different sections - two towers were added later on at two separate times. The castle was owned by a few different people over time, the names of which escape me. We were brought through the castle by a guide who started us out in the drawing room where we were able to see lovely Delft tiles on one fireplace, soapstone chinese figurines on the other fireplace mantle. The room had original ceilings from the 16th-17th century.

Old Staircases in the castle

We visited the Dining Room, which had sixty-four paintings on wooden panels painted by Flemish painters in the seventeenth century. They were darkened by time and they didn't really tell a story as you went around the room, mostly just for visual aesthetics. There was also a really lovely chandelier in the room, all metals and made by a local blacksmith. It used to have candles in it but they took the chandelier, flipped it upside down, and fitted it with light bulbs where the candles used to go. In between each "candle" was a cutout of a star. One entire wall in the room had a Flemish tapestry from 1580 depicting Europa and the Bull.

A view of the castle looking out one of the windows on the top floor of the Castle.

In the Library, the original ceilings were still there, made in 1617 for the King. They were beautiful too, intricately sculpted plaster in shapes of cherub faces and floral designs. There was also a small display with lace bobbins and a piece of tapestry from the Renaissance that were found under the floorboards above the room.

Entrance to the gardens behind the castle

However my favorite room was a room of paintings by John Henry Lorimer, who had tenancy in the castle from 1916 when his mother died to 1936. He had studied in France during the time of the Impressionists, but didn't quite like their works. He enjoyed trying to copy the styles of many different painters. The guide told us that his works were often shown at the Salon and that the Louvre owns four of his paintings.
After visiting the inside of the castle, we walked the outter grounds. Behind the castle were some very nice gardens with paths intersecting throughout. We spent about a half hour back there, just walking around, taking photos of the plant life and enjoying autumn in Scotland.

A view of the castle from the gardens

I hope you all enjoyed this and it wasn't too long - you lucked out though, it's mostly pictures! I've been finding Scotland to be such an enchanting place just saturated with culture and I hope you've all been enjoying reading about it!

Moth in the gardens

Cheers!

(For more pictures from my trip to Edinburgh or Kellie Castle, including puppies, the TARDIS, and Yoda, visit my flickr page!)