Details
Depth: 28cm (11 inches)
Width: 33cm (13 inches)
Height: 87cm (34.5 inches)
This magnificent figure is made of carved and painted fir. After the Act of Union, 1707, Glasgow became one of the chief ports for the importation of American tobacco, thus figures of Highlanders became the normal sign for tobacconists. They are usually represented holding a pinch of snuff and a snuff mull, often a real one. David Wishart, the famous Jacobite tobacconist in London in the 1720’s, was one of the first to use a Highlander Trade Sign. The feather in this one’s bonnet is, unusually, white indicating the tobacconist was a Jacobite sympathiser as a white cockade was adopted by the Jacobite army in 1745. This one has the original paint and a particularly pleasing slightly forward stance. With original circular locking bolt on the back. Scottish, circa 1770.
Ref: for similar see ‘Two hundred years of English Naive Art’ by James Ayres publ. ASI pp.128-129. Also ‘British Folk Art’ (1977) p.41
Ref: DG 38