Shown here is a detail of the Nursery, one of the many rooms in the Dunblane Doll House. Each of the pieces is functional, as well as beautifully detailed. The Nursery has its own Doll’s House (on the left), a rocking horse which rocks, a bed, cot, and tea table. Among the resident dolls is a Golliwog (on the chair to the right). The wall paper is hand painted, showing scenes from nursery rhymes.

The Dunblane Doll’s house is perhaps one of the most important 20th century pieces of its kind, in a museum collection, and it was gifted by the Gavin family who made it, to the Stirling Smith where it has been on show for the last 20 years.

Mrs Grace Gavin and her family modelled it on a dream house of the time, and built it as a means of raising money for the Red Cross in war time. The house was taken on tour from 1941-1945 to 78 different towns in Britain. Items were sold from it, and replacements were made by the Gavin family. By May 1945, it had raised £8580 for the Red Cross.

The house has been re-wired with funding from the Friends of the Smith, and given a spring clean by Collections Curator Michael McGinnes. From April 1 – 30 June it will be on show in Dunblane Museum for a special exhibition.

Steven Campbell (1953-2007) died at the tragically early age of 53. Had he lived, he would have been 60 this month.

Shown here is his painting “Outside Right at Sunset Gate” purchased for the Stirling Smith collections in 1996, with a grant from the Scottish Arts Council. Campbell often used literary references as starting points for his paintings and this particular work was inspired by the poetry of Algernon Swinburne.

Steven Campbell was born in Glasgow, and attended Glasgow School of Art as a mature student, 1978-1892. He gained many prizes and exhibited in New York from 1983 onwards. His style of strong, colourful, figurative work was widely appreciated, and promoted by some art critics as part of a ‘New Glasgow Boys’ or ‘Glasgow Pups’ movement. The other artists in this group included Ken Currie, Peter Howson and Adrian Wisnewski, and in reality, all of them were different.

One factor which distinguishes Campbell from all the rest was that he and his family lived in Kippen, and when he was commissioned to paint a work for Glasgow Airport, the scene and theme which greeted visitors at the Departure gate was his beloved Kippen hills, stretching towards Glasgow. Like many Stirlingshire artists, other cities have claimed him, but we should remember that his world-view was also Kippen-based.

Why does the Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum have two sample bottles of North Sea Oil, when Stirling is quite a distance away from the North Sea? As always, the answer lies in Stirling’s geography, right at the heart of Scotland, and a crossing point of all major roads. The need for improved transport has always been a major factor in Stirling’s history, and for generations, it was a coach building town, the major company being William Kinross & Sons. 150 years ago, one of their rivals, Stevenson & Elliot of Stirling, won the commission to build a 6 horse carriage for the Viceroy of Egypt. Some of the earliest motor cars were also built in Stirling, and Stirling had the first asphalted roads in Scotland, the Trinidad and Tobago Asphalt Company setting up a plant here for that purpose.

Stirling’s reputation as a place of quality garages has always been high, and in 1974 – 75, when the first oil was drawn from the North Sea, the oil company flew Sandy Morrison of Morrison’s Garage, Whins of Milton, (established 1927) and President of the Scottish Motor Traders’ Association, to the Auk Platform to witness the historic moment. The two bottles, now in the Smith, are a souvenir of the trip and an indicator of Stirling’s importance in Scottish transport history.

Gilbert Rennie

How many people in Kippen are now aware of the important contribution of Sir Gilbert Rennie (1895 – 1981)? In this portrait, c1910, he was a pupil at the High School of Stirling. The portrait is a recent gift to the Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum collections by Archie MacCallum.

Gilbert Rennie was born and raised in Stirling. When the Great War broke out in 1914, he served with the King’s Own Scottish Borderers, winning the Military Cross. The rest of his life was dedicated to the colonial service, in Ceylon 1920 – 1937, and from 1937 – 1939 as Financial Secretary to the Gold Coast. From 1939 – 1947, he was Chief Secretary to Kenya. He was knighted in 1946 and was appointed as the first High Commissioner to Rhodesia and Nyasaland in 1954.

He was very proud of his Stirling background, and he and his wife funded the first Heritage Room in the High School of Stirling in 1962. He is one of the people of Stirling who helped shape world history, and his life and contribution deserve to be celebrated in his home town.