Oval, wood-framed profile of Captain Donald MacKinnon, Heanish, moulded from white wax in 1867. Captain MacKinnon was captain of the tea clipper ‘Taeping’ which won the Great China Tea Race of 1866. The portrait is believed to have been made by William Murray of Glasgow, whose daughter, Margaret Anne Murray, married Donald MacKinnon in 1855. William Murray is known to have made wax and plaster portraits of his relatives as gifts, and it may be that this was created after Captain MacKinnon’s death.
When the portrait arrived at An Iodhlann, the wax was broken into many pieces and the label on the back had been cut out. It was sent to the Scottish Conservation Studio at Hopetoun House, Queensferry for restoration, where conservators discovered that there had been two previous attempts to repair it, once with candle wax and once with sellotape.
Softback book ‘Eilean Uaine Thiriodh / The Green Isle of Tiree’ by Margaret Bennett and Eric Rose, 2014. Signed “Presented to An Iodhalnn by Ethel MacCallum, May 2015”, it is a biography of Ethel MacCallum who, in 1942, was evacuated from an orphanage in Glasgow to the Island of Tiree. She became fluent in Gaelic and, with her natural gift for music and song, was encouraged to write her own compositions. The book includes some of her original work on a CD.
Flat grey piece of sandstone glacial drift found in Barrapol in 2015. It was originally proposed as a limpet hammer, but Dr Fraser Hunter and Ann Clarke have said this was not the case.
Typical crofter’s work clothing displayed during the Agriculture exhibition in 2012: blue denim dungarees, blue denim jacket, checked cotton shirt, green/grey cloth cap, green rain hat, red neck scarf, black belt, sturdy walking boots.
