Alison Kinnaird

November 16, 2024 by CelticLife No CommentsCeltic Life

Scotland’s foremost creative isn’t slowing down anytime soon.

Over fifty years ago, Alison Kinnaird applied for a student placement at Edinburgh College of Art. She had always enjoyed drawing and painting and during her school years she was regarded as creative and talented. Sadly, her aspirations of becoming an artist seemed dashed when the College’s letter of rejection dropped through her letterbox. However – in the words of the proverb ‘good things come to those who wait’ – today Kinnaird is regarded as one of the world’s leading glass engravers, although that definition oversimplifies her art.

Through the decades, Kinnaird has been commissioned to create windows in churches and cathedrals across the U.K., gifts for members of the British royal family – including the late Queen Mother and King Charles (when he was Prince of Wales), and for his Imperial Highness, Crown Prince of Japan. Other works include glass panels for members of the aristocracy, interface panels for Murano Hotel, Tacoma, and a host of glass ‘award trophies’ for presentation by prestigious commissioning bodies including banks and universities. These works range in size, scale and complexity from something you might display on a desk or in a cabinet to the fifteen-foot-tall window in 14th century Dornoch Cathedral. Recent works are even larger. Kinnaird’s artworks feature in public and private collections in Edinburgh, Glasgow, London, New York, Prague, and Munich – including such establishments as Victoria and Albert Museum, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, and Corning Museum of Glass. She has exhibited extensively across Europe and the USA.

No trip to Edinburgh Art Festival would be complete without a visit to Kinnaird’s new Art Glass Studio on Ferry Road. The large windows showcase some of her creations to passers-by, but the real magic is inside when the light from outside permeates the art.

Glass is a wonderful medium capturing and reflecting light yet, at the same time, acting as a membrane through which light flows like a liquid, redefining itself in the marks of the artist. For Kinnaird, the skill is to harness the light, hold it, shape it and above all to say something with it.

“It’s taking the ancient skill of glass engraving, knowing how to use it to communicate, imbuing it with meaning, and elevating it from craft to art.”

The objects in her studio are testament to her philosophy; moreover, they are testament to the influences that have shaped her life.

Along with her passion for the visual arts, Kinnaird has been making music since she was seven years old. At first it was cello, competing in competitions in Edinburgh by the age of twelve, and later being advised to go to London to train professionally. Instead, she remained in Edinburgh and took up the harp under the tutelage of renowned Scottish harpist Jean Campbell. She attended Edinburgh University where she was awarded an MA in Celtic Studies and Archaeology. The course embraced the Gaelic languages of Scotland and Ireland, as well as aspects of Celtic culture including poetry, all of which sat comfortably with her musical ability and a developing interest in traditional Scottish music. The harp is now her instrument of choice, and she is an avid researcher of forgotten Scottish harp music.

She is quick to highlight the distinction between folk and traditional music, “Folk music is usually seen as belonging to the lower classes, while in Scotland and Ireland, traditional music was embraced by the whole of society, from the big houses to the crofts of clansmen. The harp, however, was always a professional’s instrument and many of these households had their own harpists to provide entertainment. In the aftermath of the failed Jacobean rising of 1745, many of the big houses disappeared with the landowners displaced and scattered. Traditional music was first forgotten and subsequently lost, and the harp – once an instrument of choice – all but disappeared.”

By the 1960s, there were only about six harpists playing in public in Scotland. Keen to reverse that trend, Kinnaird is now recognized as one of the leading exponents of traditional Scottish harp music. She has written several books on the topic and co-authored ‘The Tree of Strings’ – a history of the Scottish harp. She was winner of the Clarsach Trophy at the National Mod and the Harp Competition in the Pan Celtic Festival in Killarney.

Another undoubted influence on her life and work was her late husband, Robin Morton. They met at a music gig in Shetland in the early 1970s and married in 1974. Morton was a leading figure in the Scottish, folk music scene being a founding member of the Northern Ireland ensemble Boys of the Lough, and later producer and manager for the Glasgow-based Battlefield Band. Kinnaird and Morton settled in Temple Village south of Edinburgh. There, they bought an old church and converted in into their family home with art and recording studios. It holds many happy memories for Kinnaird,

“It was a special place, full of music, the buzz of the engraving wheel, and a gathering place for family, friends and like-minded, creative people.”

It was a visit to her father’s family in Forres near Inverness that kickstarted Kinnaird’s foray into the world of glass engraving. One rainy day she called into the studio of a fine copper-wheel engraver. Fascinated by his work and the process, she showed him some of her own sketches. He offered her the opportunity to come and work with him over the summer holidays and instantly she was hooked.

“To be able to use techniques that have existed for over two thousand years and to adapt and reinterpret those techniques in uniquely expressive ways is what excites me.”

At its most basic level, glass engraving can be considered decorative beauty. In the hands of Kinnaird it is elevated to art, conveying powerful, thought-provoking messages and ideas. Looking around her studio gallery I am witness to half a century of artistic skill and conceptual development. In the window, backlit by morning sunlight, stands a series of glass panels depicting trees and leaves of indigenous species. They sparkle not as literal copies of plant forms but as interpretations of the Ogham or Celtic Tree Alphabet, with each letter represented by a different tree. On a side wall – illuminated by an elegant frame with embedded perimeter LED edge lighting – is a powerful piece depicting an army of hollow soldiers; faceless, non-existent and empty. Within one stands a child – a poignant reminder of who these men once were or perhaps those they now kill, for the reality of war not only destroys the enemy but reshapes the mind of the warrior whom we task with effecting acts of dehumanizing brutality. Surrounding the figures are engraved the names of dozens of conflicts from Glencoe to Gaza. On another wall flies a glass kite with a long tail carrying white feathers. The body of the kite flutters in the breeze but carries a figure clouded with all the explosiveness of war and a series of outstretched palms reminiscent of the prehistoric handprints from the walls of Cueva de las Manos, Argentina. There is something primal and disturbing about this work that was born out of the poem If I Must Die by Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer – it is soft and brutal, angelic and warlike, peaceful and destructive.

Of all the wonderful glass art that Kinnaird has produced it is perhaps her self-portrait in the collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge, England that says most about who this remarkable woman is. Created in 2006 this 18” x 18” x 4” panel of optical glass shows her standing to the left making her mark on the glass with an extended finger, while to the right, rippling through a curtain of sound she is seen in silhouette playing the Scottish harp. Illuminated by coloured LED lights, interlacing ‘lissajous’ patterns – reminiscent of intertwined Celtic curves – dance around the edges. They are the visual embodiment of soundwaves sampled from her music. Like all of Kinnaird’s art it begs the viewer to look beyond the obvious.