MUSEUMS Galleries Scotland provided the funding, while our Pictish ancestors provided the topic of study at the end of term for pupils from Thurso High School, writes Christine Russell.

CAITHNESS Horizons invited a group of Standard Grade Art pupils and their teacher, Mrs Rhona Hayley, to spend three days studying and replicating the symbols carved into the two Caithness Pictish stones now displayed in Caithness Horizons foyer.

With project funding from Museums Galleries Scotland, Caithness Horizons also had the support of Edinburgh-based John Borland from the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland [RCAHMS], and local master stone craftsman, George Gunn, to provide historical information, technical advice and practical support to the young people.

Jennifer Hardman at work on a stone carving

By the end of three days, all of them had individually sketched and carved their own versions of Pictish symbols taken from the Caithness Horizons stones, working on Caithness Flagstone provided by A & D Sutherland, Spittal Quarry.

Then, working in groups, they carved symbols and samples of ogham lettering into bigger pieces of high quality sandstone, supplied by Moray Stone Cutters of Elgin.

John Borland has an expert knowledge of the Pictish Stones of Scotland, spending his professional life surveying and creating detailed drawings of them and other significant constructions from the distant and more recent past.

“By the end of the week I was very impressed by the pupils’ work,” he said. “I know from experience how hard it is to concentrate on drawing these symbols accurately, and the physical stamina needed to carve them into stone is considerable.  We had a bit of a smile as we watched them move from a standing to a sitting posture after a morning’s carving with the hefty chisels and mells.”

The project came into being during a casual conversation last winter between John Borland and myself. John was very quietly sitting drawing the carvings on our Skinnet and Ulbster stones for the Commission as I was working on a completely different project.

A brief conversation and a half-promise to develop this idea became a definite plan after discussion with Rhona Hayley from Thurso High School, who saw it as an ideal opportunity to give her pupils some experience of sculpture as well as design.

Maeva Donaldson and Kayla McPhee working on the mirror and comb symbol, which is found on many Pictish Stones

We’re very grateful to Museums Galleries Scotland, to RCAHMS and to Archaeology Scotland for funding, professional advice and for the loan of some tools.  We’re particularly grateful to A & D Sutherland who donated and delivered some beautiful Caithness flagstone, and to Moray Stone Cutters who really made a Herculean effort to deliver their stone despite huge difficulties.

The project team hope that the project will encourage local people as well as visitors to take a keen interest in the Pictish culture signified in the Skinnet and Ulbster stones.

The carvings on these two Caithness stones suggest that they date from the period of the Picts’ Christianisation.  Once broken into several pieces, the Skinnet Stone was restored especially for upright display within its current home at Caithness Horizons.  It now stands impressively beside the Ulbster stone in the museum’s foyer.

Caithness Horizons intends to display the new Thurso High School stones whenever they can find a way to secure them safely, allowing visitors to create rubbings from them – something that is not possible from the originals.

Meantime, art teacher Rhona Hayley used the Pictish symbol of the eagle as her chosen totem for carving, along with a symbol known as the three ovals, a fragment of which can be seen on the Skinnet Stone.

“We learned this week that the three ovals are particularly associated with Caithness Pictish carvings,” she said. “As Thurso High School emblem is the eagle, I thought it would be appropriate to carve the eagle and three ovals into the stone I’m taking back up to school.”

Caithness Horizons invested in buying some sets of carving tools to keep as a local resource, in the hope that school pupils and others, like stone craftsman George Gunn, will continue to use them, thus keeping in circulation the knowledge and skills demonstrated so impressively in the variety of stone carvings left by the Picts, a people whose story remains an interpretive challenge to modern historians.

Participating pupils from Thurso High School were Maeva Donaldson, Andrew McGregor, Kyle Easson, Scott Mackay, Carenza Sudd, Kayla McPhee, Jennifer Hardman, Kirstine Freidenfelde, and Craig Kennedy.

Christine Russell is education and community officer at Caithness Horizons.

© Christine Russell, 2011

Links

• Museums Galleries Scotland
• Caithness Horizons