Furniture and furnishings in early modern and late medieval Scotland were made locally or imported, mostly from Flanders and France. Although few pieces of furniture survive from the early part of the period, a rich vocabulary and typology is preserved in inventories and wills. This documentary evidence in the Scots language details the homes of the wealthy and aristocratic. Textiles and beds belonging to Mary, Queen of Scots are very well documented. Scottish wooden furniture was often carved with the initials of married couples.Rosalind K. Marshall, Virgins and Viragos: A History of Women in Scotland (Collins, 1983), p. 88.

Documentary sources and collections

A survey of furniture and archival evidence (but lacking references) was published by John Warrack in 1920. Warrack investigated inventories found in Scottish wills.John Warrack, Domestic Life in Scotland, 1488-1688 (London: Methuen, 1920). More recently, Margaret Sanderson presented a variety of sources and examples in her work A Kindly Place?Margaret Sanderson, A Kindly Place? Living in Sixteenth-Century Scotland (East Linton: Tuckwell, 2002).

The inventories of the 16th-century royal household were published in 1815 and 1863. The royal inventory makers were concerned only with rich textiles and tapestries, and few other domestic items are mentioned.Thomas Thomson, A Collection of Inventories (Edinburgh, 1815): Joseph Robertson, Inventaires de la Royne Descosse (Edinburgh, 1863). The mostly unpublished record of Edinburgh's baillie court, running from 1582 onwards, known as the Register of Decreets, details the sales or "apprisals" of debtors' goods including many items of costume and some pieces of furniture, such as "ane auld almery of aik" (an oak cupboard), "a painted bed of fir", and "ane balhoillie coffer coverit with blak ledder".David Robertson and Marguerite Wood, Castle and Town (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1928), pp. 208, 210–211.

References to many published Scottish household inventories are included in Simon Swynfen Jervis, British and Irish Inventories (London, 2010). Lists of furniture and movables were formally known as "inventories of plenishing". The architectural ambitions and furnishings of the political elite in late 17th-century Scotland revealed in inventories were investigated by Charles Wemyss. At Drumlanrig Castle, a dressing room for the Duke of Queensbury included the modern convenience of "a lead close stool in a wainscot box with a lead pipe for the water to come in and a large one for the Excrements to go out". A taste for London-made furnishings was satisfied by new workshops in Edinburgh, including the making of cane backed and seated chairs by William Scott,William Scott, Furniture History Society BIFMO by James Leblanc of the Canongate who made looking-glasses, and Sarah Dalrymple who painted furniture in the Japan style.Charles Wemyss, 'Ancient Without and Modern Within: The Noble Houses of Post-Restoration Scotland and their Furnishings', Regional Furniture, XXIX, (2015), pp. 36-9Sarah Dalrymple, Furniture History Society BIFMOAaron Allen, Building Early Modern Edinburgh: A Social History of Craftwork and Incorporation (Edinburgh, 2018), pp. 99-100. Sarah Dalrymple argued with other suppliers and glass manufacturers, including Scott and Leblanc, and petitioned Parliament over a possible monopoly on glass for mirrors and lighting sconces that would destroy her business.Jill Turnbull, The Scottish Glass Industry 1610-1750: to Serve the Whole Nation with Glass (Edinburgh, 2001), pp. 189-192: National Library of Scotland Acc.13234 is a recipe book compiled by a daughter of Julian Billingham which includes methods for Japanning and painting glass.

Significant early antiquarian collectors of Scottish furnishings include Walter Scott, Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, William Stirling-Maxwell, William Fraser, and Joseph Noel Paton.Stephen Jackson, 'The Scottish Caquetoire Chair', Regional Furniture, 35 (2021), p. 88. Paton's sister, the sculptor Amelia Robertson Hill, (wife of the photographer David Octavius Hill) described how her father obtained a cradle in Linlithgow thought to have been that of Mary, Queen of Scots. In the 1830s he employed a man to hunt for old furniture near the abandoned royal palaces. He discovered the cradle in use in a dwelling near Linlithgow Palace. The mother told Paton's agent it was the Queen's cradle, and she would not part with it, even for £1. Paton heard the story and bought the cradle. Theodore Napier gave the cradle to the National Museum in 1912. It was made long after the Stewarts left Scotland.Theodore Napier, 'Queen Mary's Cradle', Cornelius Hallen, Scottish Antiquary, Or, Northern Notes & Queries, vol. 10 (1896), pp. 149-151.'Cradle from Linlithgow, NMS

Examples of surviving furniture considered to be of good provenance were drawn and published by John William Small, an architect and furniture-maker based in Stirling, as Scottish Woodwork of the Sixteenth & Seventeenth Centuries (Stirling & London, 1878).David Jones, Looking at Scottish Furniture: A Documented Anthology, 1570-1900 (Crawford, 1987). Towards the end of the 19th-century, a fashion for "oak rooms" loosely based on historic interiors, was supplied by new reproduction pieces, some supplied by Small's workshop in Stirling, the North British Art Furniture Works.David Jones, 'The Caquetoire Legacy', Regional Furniture, 36 (2022), pp. 99-100.

William Burrell donated Scottish furniture now shown at Provand's Lordship in Glasgow. Marc Ellington collected furniture at Towie Barclay,Ellie House, 'The restoration man reveals the magic in Aberdeenshire’s ruins', Press and Journal, 18 January 2017 including an early Scottish cupboard or dresser dated 1613, now displayed at the V&A Dundee.Dresser, V&A W.28-2022 The National Museum of Scotland has a well-known chair, a Scottish caquetoire, with the initials and star heraldry of Annabell Murray, Countess of Mar.Stephen Jackson, 'The Scottish Caquetoire Chair', Regional Furniture, 35 (2021), pp. 91-3. The chair furnished Alloa Tower, and was traditionally regarded as a nursing chair.Elizabeth Benger, Memoirs of the Life of Mary Queen of Scots, vol. 2 (London, 1823), p. 486. An earlier chair associated with the Baillie and Ross families of Lamington and known as William Wallace's chair is kept by Mohamed Al-Fayed at Balnagown Castle.Fritz von der Schulenburg, Balnagown: Ancestral Home of the Clan Ross: A Scottish Castle Through Five Centuries (London, 1997), p. 113. The Great Hall at Darnaway Castle houses a late medieval chair known as "Randolph's chair".J. Gordon, History of the Province of Moray by Lachlan Shaw, vol. 2 (Glasgow, 1882), p. 211. Furniture in rural, Highland, or vernacular use was collected by Isabel Grant, George 'Taffy' Davidson, Jean Maitland of Burnside, Forfar, and Margaret Michie.Lindsay MacBeth, 'A History of Collecting Vernacular Furniture in Scotland', Regional Furniture, vol. 6 (1992), pp. 31-2: Stephen Jackson, 'The Scottish Caquetoire Chair', Regional Furniture, 35 (2021), p. 89.

Beds

There were several kinds of beds. A richly carved bed at Crathes Castle with Burnett family monograms is one of the few surviving 16th-century Scottish beds, attributed to an Aberdeen school of carving. There is also a set of two chairs at Crathes, for the laird Alexander Burnet and one for his wife Katherine Gordon, hers with Gordon heraldry and dated 1597.Victor Chinnery, Oak Furniture: The British Tradition (Woodbridge, 1979), p. 463: Aidan Harrison, 'A Small Scottish Chair', Regional Furniture, XXIX (2015), pp. 1-13 In April 1581 James VI had a "stand bed" made of walnut timber and painted, with an oak dining table. These stand beds were free-standing wooden structures with posts.National Records of Scotland, treasurer's accounts, E21/62 f.125v April 1581.

James IV owned a "tursing bed", suitable to be packed and tied up for transport around Scotland. He won a lit (camp bed) from an Edinburgh merchant, Arthur Bruce, while playing cards at the merchant's house. James also won a stick of Holland linen, a box, and other merchandise. Bruce was compensated with a gift of 40 gold crowns and was probably a regular supplier of furnishings to the royal houses.Accounts of the Treasurer, 4 (Edinburgh, 1902), pp. 325–336.

James V had a bed made for use on his ships.John Warrack, Domestic Life in Scotland, 1488-1688 (London: Methuen, 1920), p. 160. When James V married Madeleine of Valois, his father-in-law Francis I gave him Arras tapestry, cloths of estate, three rich beds with all their furniture (curtains and counterpanes) of silk and gold, two cupboards of silver gilt plate, table carpets, and Persian carpets.William Guthrie, General History of Scotland, vol. 5 (London, 1767), p. 166: Historical works of Sir James Balfour, vol. 1 (Edinburgh, 1824), pp. 266–267: NLS Adv. MS 33:2:15.Rosalind K. Marshall, Scottish Queens: 1034-1714 (John Donald: Edinburgh, 2007), p. 106.Sally Rush, 'French Fashion in Sixteenth-Century Scotland: The 1539 Inventory of James V's Wardrobe', Furniture History, 42 (2006), pp. 1-25.

According to the chronicle of Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie, Madeleine chose these items herself from the French royal wardrobe.Aeneas Mackay, Historie and Chroniclis of Scotland, vol. 1 (Edinburgh, 1899), p. 368 French records mention that Francis I commissioned a new bed for the couple. After James V died in 1542, an inventory recorded a green velvet bed in the wardrobe of Falkland Palace with velvet covered posts, packed in coffers and travel bags called "sowmes".John G. Harrison, Wardrobe Inventories of James V: British Library MS Royal 18 C (Historic Scotland: Edinburgh, 2008). The packing cases for Madeleine's furniture were made in Paris by Hermant Therolde.Collection des ordonnances des rois de France: Catalogue des actes de François 1er, 8 (Paris, 1905), p. 114 nos. 30297, 30298, 30299 There was also a suite of stools for her ladies in waiting, six stools for "wemen to sit upoun coverit with sad cramasy (red) velvott".Thomas Thomson, Collection of Inventories (Edinburgh, 1815), p. 101. James Carvour made a pair of folding stools for her entry or arrival.Henry Paton, Accounts of the Masters of Work, 1 (Edinburgh, 1957), p. 227.

A "kaissit" or cased bed was enclosed in timber. These were also known as "close beds". Fynes Moryson described a type of wooden bed in 1598 as "cupboards in the wall, with doors to be opened and shut at pleasure". A wooden bed built into the wall panelling can be seen at Craigievar Castle, converted in the early 20th-century to hold a bathtub.John Warrack, Domestic Life in Scotland, 1488-1688 (London: Methuen, 1920), p. 161: Sydney Perks, Residential Flats of All Classes (London, 1905), p. 3: Craigievar box bed: HES Canmore A wooden close bed or box-bed was an "essay" or apprentice piece for an Edinburgh wright in 1683,Bernard Cotton, Scottish Vernacular Furniture (London, 2008), p.30. and such beds remained a feature of a range of Scottish homes into the 19th-century.Katie Barclay, 'Making the Bed, Making the Lower-order Home in Eighteenth-century Scotland', Stephen G. Hague & Karen Lipsedge, At Home in the Eighteenth Century (Routledge, 2022), pp. 266-22: Catriona Mackie, 'The Bed-Alcove Tradition in Ireland and Scotland', Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 113 (2013), pp. 309-40: David Jones, 'Box Beds in Eastern Scotland', Regional Furniture, V (1991), pp. 79-85