Description
Book SynopsisDr Isabel Grant (1887-1983) was a pioneer who, early in life, was intrigued by the lives and ways of living of her fellow Highlanders. She eventually pursued this by collecting objects - farming, fishing, crofting and domestic - from across the Scottish Highlands and presenting them to the public, initially as an exhibition in Inverness in 1930, then in Iona, and later in a dedicated museum Am Fasgadh ('the Shelter'). The tenacity shown by Dr Grant in pursuit of an idea that first struck her while on a childhood visit to Sweden is revealed in her own words. In the face of indifference, little money, sexism and the erratic Scottish climate, Dr Grant succeeded in presenting items which told of the working and home lives of the people she so admired. Am Fasgadh continues today as the popular Highland Folk Museum at Kingussie and Newtonmore, Inverness-shire, Scotland.
Trade Review'Dr I F Grant (1887-1983) was a very remarkable historian and ethnographer, whose achievements were insufficiently appreciated in her lifetime, and who even now is not recognised as among the great contributors to Scottish life and culture in the interwar and postwar years - up there with the likes of Edwin Muir, Hugh MacDiarmid and Neil Gunn ... it is good that the NMS has published this autobiographical memoir as some recompense for the shabby snobbery to which she was so often subjected in her lifetime.' Chris Smout in Scottish Local History
Table of ContentsForeword by Hugh CheapeEarly InfluencesThe 1920sThe Inverness ExhibitionIonaAn Historical OutlinePrinciples of CollectingCollecting in the IslandsArdnamurchan, Arisaig and Kyle of LochalshApplecross and the SeaThe North-West and Highland BuildingsWest and EastPerthshire and AngusWorkers in Wood and IronOther CraftsCraftsmen's Tools and Household PlenishingsLightingTransportThe Social PatternLagganKingussieGlossary
