The Old State Drawing Room from Hamilton Palace at the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh

Abstract

This article examines one of the most important rooms from Scotland’s largest and greatest private residence, which has been transferred from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and installed as a focal point in the centre of one of the ten new galleries in the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh. It combines the results of research on the present Duke of Hamilton’s extensive archives and French and Company’s stock sheets at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles with the careful physical inspection of all the parts of the woodwork and dendrochronological analysis of the two capitals. All this was necessary in order to understand the alterations to the room between 1700 and 1990, and to conserve and display the chimneypiece wall in the National Museum.