Sculptor: Kenny Mackay (b. 1966)
Foundry: Powderhall Bronze
Location: In front of Royal Concert Hall, Buchanan Street
Date unveiled: 7th May 2002

This is a new gallery which follows on from last month's article on Macfarlane's Saracen Foundry. The first pictures come from Mowbray in Cape Town, South Africa.

We invite contributions for this gallery from anywhere in the world.

This gallery shows a selection of monuments and memorials in various locations around Glasgow.

The image is from the Monument to David Younger, which can be found in Cathcart Cemetry.

Sculptor: William Kellock Brown (1856-1934)
Architect: Sir John James Burnet (1857-1938)
Location: Former Athenaeum Theatre, 179 Buchanan Street
Date executed: 1891-3

Sculptor: William Kellock Brown (1856-1934)
Architects: Frank Burnet & Boston (fl. 1878-)
Location: 59-69 Renfield Street, City Centre
Date executed: 1900

• Hutchesontown District Library, McNeil Street, Gorbals. (1904-6)
• Dennistoun Public Library, Craigpark, Dennistoun. (1903-6)
• Woodside Public Library, St George's Road, Woodlands. (1902-5)
• Bridgeton District Library, Landressey Street, Bridgeton. (1903-6)
• Govanhill and Crosshill Public Library, Langside Road, Govanhill. (1902-6)

Gary Nisbet's Lunchtime Lectures at Hutchesons' Hall are finding a very appreciative audience. There are still three lectures to be delivered in the series, the next being on 11th June, so, if you are in Glasgow, take the opportunity to go along and listen to Gary's unique story of Glasgow's sculpture.

On 21st May the Queen officially opened the redeveloped Queen's Gallery at Buckingham Palace. This includes a major sculptural programme by Sandy Stoddart. High on either side of the hall run two friezes by Stoddart, the largest element of the commission. These are flanked by four relief panels. For the end of the hall, framing the entrance to the exhibition areas, Stoddart produced two free-standing figures. As part of the commission, the artist also created a life-size bust of the young Queen at the time of her coronation in 1953. The progress of this work was documented in a television programme, Artworks Scotland, shown on BBC2 on 25th May.

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.

Cone Heads

The placing of traffic cones on the heads of Glasgow’s public statues has become something of a cult in recent years, with the Duke of Wellington and his horse, outside the Gallery of Modern Art, being regularly targeted. The city’s Lord Provost, Alex Mosson, and the press have until recently laughed this practice off as a typical piece of Glasgow humour; nothing more than a tribute to the recipient and a time-honoured tradition, a gentler version of the Glasgow Kiss and, in the case of the Evening Times newspaper and the Duke of Wellington statue, the source of a successful advertising campaign. So effective have these positive messages been upon those who get a kick from such displays of bravado, that a number of other Glasgow statues have also received the traffic cone treatment.

Now that Donald Dewar’s statue has been damaged as the result of a similar ‘tribute’, the practice has become an embarrassment to the city and proposals have been announced to heighten the pedestal in an effort to elevate Dewar’s head and vulnerable spectacles out of reach, and to erect a railing around it. In a typical case of locking the stable door after the horse has bolted, this is a solution to a problem which should have been foreseen during the monument’s design and siting process, and one which has already been proven to be less than effective in protecting other targeted monuments in the city.

Had the city authorities and police given serious thought to the accessibility and damage to the Wellington Monument and the fact that this is much taller than the Dewar statue, together with the ‘coning’ of the even taller, fenced-in, Roberts and Kelvin Memorials in Kelvingrove Park, they would have seen that a monument’s height and its railings are no deterrent to anyone fuelled with alcohol and armed with a traffic cone.

Rather than wasting money on these already tried, tested and failed security measures, a more effective solution would surely be for the Lord Provost and Glasgow’s most popular newspaper to publicly denounce ‘coning’ for the vandalism that it is rather than the non-malicious, high spirits that they have hitherto excused it as.

Demolished!
The Glasgow Seamen's Institute and McAlpine Street Police Office Lost.

Whilst all eyes have been focused on the unveiling of the Dewar statue and universal disgust has been expressed at its recent vandalism, few have taken any notice of the demolition of the Glasgow Seamen's Institute and the Marine Police Office in the Broomielaw which occurred in March.

In what must be regarded as ‘official’ acts of vandalism, the Broomielaw, which once teemed with the crews of ships from all over the world when the area was Glasgow’s docklands, has been stripped of two of its few remaining historic buildings. Both of which featured fine sculpture.

The McAlpine Street Police Station was built in 1882, to an Italian Palazzo design by John Carrick, the City Architect. As well as being one of his last remaining district police offices, the building was distinguished by its fine carverwork which included a massive, Roman fasces (bundle of rods and an axe), a sword and a finely detailed city escutcheon which retained its original polychrome paint.

The greater loss of the two was the Seamen's Institute. Built in 1927, by R A Bryden & Robertson, this prominent, domed building incorporated reliefs of a sailing ship in full sail and a magnificent (and rare), Art Deco Ocean Liner amongst its sculpture, which recalled the institute’s service to seafarers in the area for well over a century (the institute’s chapel in Brown Street, by John Burnet (1861), which featured a statue of Hope Leaning On An Anchor by John Crawford, was demolished in the 1970s - for detailed descriptions and illustrations of both buildings see: Ray McKenzie’s Public Sculpture Of Glasgow (2002), pp. 29, 433, and the Virtual Mitchell Website, Brown Street, C2085).

Also lost were escutcheons recording the institute’s founding in 1822, its construction in 1927, and the badges of two of the great shipping lines which had ships built on the Clyde and which made use of the institute's facilities, the famous White Star and Anchor Lines.

Despite their historic, architectural and sculptural importance to the city and its maritime heritage, both buildings were demolished without outcry or comment.

It is also of interest to note that both buildings stood in the Anderston district, which is represented in the City Council by our own Lord Provost, Alex Mosson!

Author: Gary Nisbet

Glasgow in 1901
By James Hamilton Muir, Muirhead Bone (Illustrator)

Celebrating Glasgow at its height, at the dawn of the 20th century, this idiosyncratic and entertaining book vividly evokes a smoke-hazed and somber city, ringing and thundering with shipbuilding and other industries. Not beautiful, but alive and splendid. The young authors write with humor and passion. From the colorful backdrops of the quays, to the exhausted workers, to the ever-active "city man", the pages are alive with Glasgow scenes and types. The book is liberally illustrated by the pen drawings of Muirhead Bone. An introduction by Perilla Kinchin presents new material on the authors and briefly traces the city's changes in the last century.

About the Author:
James Hamilton Muir was the pseudonym of three young Glasgow men. James Bone (1872-1962) worked in a shipping office before becoming a journalist. He had a distinguished career with the Manchester Guardian and became its London editor from 1912 to 1945. Archibald Hamilton Charteris (1874-1940) studied law at the University of Glasgow. In 1920 he emigrated to a chair of international law at Sydney University in Australia. Muirhead Bone (1876-1953) was a gifted writer who became one of Scotland's leading artists. Influenced by James McNeill Whistler, he became an important figure in the revival of etching. Perilla Kinchin received a degree in classics at Cambridge and an M.A. at the University of Victoria, British Columbia. She has taught at Trinity College and Merton College. She is the author of Glasgow's Great Exhibitions. She lives in Oxford, England.

Published by White Cockade Publishing
Paperback - 328 pages facsimile edition
Publication date: 15 September, 2001
Published price: £9.99 ($16.95)