Rogers Series 6: Scottish Mauchline Ware
Series 6. A black lacquer Mauchline ware needle book.
The industry of souvenir boxes became popular in the late 19th century and came to be called Mauchline ware after the Scottish town in which they were created. Many Mauchline ware pieces double as boxes for stitching tools. Mauchline ware became widely available when modern tourism and mass buying started to become widespread in the 19th and 20th centuries. As the boxes became more common, they started to be manufactured and sold not only in Mauchline but also in neighboring towns in southwest Scotland. At the peak of Mauchline ware鈥檚 popularity, the largest manufacturer owned three factories and employed several hundred workers, but the last of those three factories closed in the 1930s. There are five distinctive finishes that mark the different categories of Mauchline ware, although some pieces have finishes that could fit in multiple categories or none of them. All five categories are represented in this series.
This series has five subseries, one for each category: transfer ware, photographic ware, tartan ware, fern ware, and black lacquer ware. The techniques that were used to decorate the boxes differ and evolved with labor and economic changes, but all of the boxes in this series are highly decorated, some with text and most with images. All boxes are Scottish, dated from the 1860s to the 1900s, and small, generally about 10 or fewer square centimeters. Some of the boxes still contain needlework tools such as crochet hooks, thimbles, and stilettos.