Gary Nisbet's Lunchtime Lectures at Hutchesons' Hall are now finished. The final one, on 25th June, all about Glasgow's Graveyards, was delivered to a packed hall. The audience were enthralled for over an hour and a half. Several other organisations have expressed an interest in having him give similar talks to their members, so if any of you are interested please get in touch with Gary now.

The one priceless piece of sculpture on everyone's mind lately is the World Cup, created by the Italian sculptor Silvio Gazzaniga in 18-carat gold. It was designed 31 years ago after the Jules Rimet Trophy was won outright by the Brazilians

George Wyllie is proposing a Crystal Ship, 30ft wide and 30ft high, to be raised on stilts above the River Kelvin at Partick, where the rivers Clyde and Kelvin meet. The ship is to represent the Clyde's history, discovery and vision. The model would change colours to represent climatic changes in other parts of the world, that information being fed by a computer link.
(Source: The Herald, 16 May 2002.)

Some of the buildings in the city centre are in a dangerous state, and, recently, sections of both Pitt Street and Bath Street have had to be closed. Three blocks in the heart of the city centre have collapsed or been demolished since October. MSP Mike Watson is now calling for the laws to be tightened to force owners to carry out repairs and maintenance. One of the first things tourists comment on is the amount of greenery growing out of Glasgow's buildings. This, of course, is where real problems start. Once the roots have got into the stonework it is just a matter of time before it comes crashing down.
(Source: Evening Times, 22 May 2002.)

Glasgow's Science Centre has been nominated for the Royal Institute of British Architects, RIBA, Stirling Prize, awarded in association with The Architects' Journal. The £20,000 prize is awarded annually. The Science Centre, designed by the Building Design Partnership, has a 127metre revolving tower.

A new interactive website, ScottishArchitecture.com - The Virtual Architecture Centre - was launched on 26th June by The Lighthouse. An online platform accessible to the general public, educational institutions and the architecture profession, this website aims to provide a central hub for information in the field of Scottish architecture and the built environment, generally.

David Mach's new exhibition at the Gallery of Modern Art is still on. You have until September 29th to get along there. I've been twice and intend seeing it at least another couple of times. You can see more of David Mach's work on his own website at http://www.davidmach.com.

Glasgow 1902 - Cowlairs Co-operative Society Drinking Fountain.

The year 2002 marks the centenary of a number of sculpture projects in Glasgow, including the unveiling of the Gladstone Statue, by William Goscombe John, in George Square, the design for Colin Menzies' Argyll Chambers in Buchanan Street, the opening of William B Whitie's Springburn Halls and the unveiling of the Cowlairs Co-op Drinking Fountain, also in Springburn.

The fountain's centenary gives us the opportunity to introduce a work by one of Glasgow's most prolific firms of monumental sculptors, Scott & Rae (fl. 1881-1971), together with an updated biography.

The fountain itself is one of the grandest of the city's existing and lost granite drinking fountains, its design betraying the hand of a disciple of Alexander 'Greek' Thomson (Alexander Skirving?), whose classically detailed designs for funerary monuments were prodigiously reproduced and varied by Scott & Rae's in enormous numbers throughout the 19th and 20th Centuries.

Typical of the Thomsonesque touches are the antefixae and palmette reliefs on the fountain's upper, temple-like, stage, together with its overall form of a sepulchral obelisk.

Of particular interest are the bronze relief panels above the, now defunct, water-spouts. These feature two pairs of clasped hands, the ubiquitous symbol of the Co-operative Wholesale Movement, and two Modern inscription panels recording the presentation of the fountain to Glasgow Corporation in 1902, and its original location in Vulcan Street, and its relocation to the Springburn Centre in 1981.

Unfortunately, the most important of the original plaques has been lost. This was the dedicatory inscription, without which the fountain has lost its real meaning and significance to the community.

The modern replacement is but a dry paraphrase of the original, celebratory text and makes no reference to the reason for the fountain's construction in the first place - the 'Society's Coming of Age' on its 21st anniversary (the fountain was unveiled on 23rd August, 1902).

The panel's loss is made doubly painful by the fact that it featured a relief of a steam locomotive ('The Diver' - Springburn was the locomotive building capital of the world at the time), which was the society's emblem, within a Glasgow Style pediment.

Its loss also means that if the plaque was signed, we will probably never know the identity of its sculptor. However, a tentative attribution could, at this stage, be made to Alexander Petrie, who produced the bronze portrait of the Rev James Bonnar for East Kilbride UP Church in collaboration with Scott & Rae, in 1901.

Like many other pedestrian fountains in Glasgow, the Cowlairs fountain was also designed as a grandiose gas-lamp.

Archive photographs reproduced in Dr Gilbert T Bell's Of Fountains And Letterheads (1998, Springburn Museum Trust Newsletter, no. 2) reveal that the lamp's original globe and crown finial were replaced with a four-sided light and, in 1981, the present, plain glass orb.

The style of the cast-iron lamp standard suggests Walter Macfarlane's Saracen Foundry as its manufacturer, another reason to celebrate the centenary of this fascinating fountain.

Author: Gary Nisbet

Hidden Glasgow
By Carol Foreman

Carol Foreman takes readers through modern Glasgow and makes them view it with a different eye. She reveals the stories of features such as the abandoned Britannia Music Hall, the golden merchant ship on top of the Merchant's House, and the Lock Hospital for "dangerous women".

Published by John Donald Publishers Ltd.
Published price: £9.99 ($15.00).
Paperback - 174 pages (1997).