The Signet Library

The front cover of November 2025's Who Do You Think You Are magazine showing two children leaning against a tree.

The BBC's "Who Do You Think You Are" Magazine new November 2025 issue's "Gem from the Archive" features the Signet Library's @oldedinburghclub.bsky.social funded project on the records of John Watson's Institution, research undertaken by @kgbaston.bsky.social @johockey.bsky.social

Before and after of this cracker from the Trials Collection at the @signetlibrary.bsky.social

And yesterday, this account of the trial of those involved in the Battle of Bonnymuir, during the Radical War of 1820. Part of the spine was detached, so a very satisfying fix!
Part of the Trials Collection at the @signetlibrary.bsky.social

www.maggiecraig.co.uk/2020/04/05/t...

A small display of decorative books, maps, manuscripts and photographs for an academic society visiting the Signet Library this afternoon.

Signet Library graffiti left by craftspeople from the 1850s into the Great War period behind the cases in the Upper Hall. The names and signatures of painters, glaziers and related trades in paint and pencil on the unpainted timber surface.

The three blue hardback volumes of Coke's notebooks with the Signet Library's Upper West Library visible beyond.

Coke's 1612 "Book of Entries" alongside three volumes of his Institutes of the Laws of England with engraved portraits of Coke.

Today's bookpost: the final three volumes of Sir John Baker's magisterial Seldon Society edition of the notebooks of the great English lawyer Sir Edward Coke (1552-1634), shown beside a selection of Coke's works from Signet Library collections.

A spotlight on this book on ‘Auld Ayr and some of its Characters’ by the prolific artist Robert Bryden in 1897. Bryden was granted the title of Royal Engraver in 1899. The engravings are such expressive portraits. From the Burghs and Shires Collection at the @signetlibrary.bsky.social

A progress report on our John Watson's Institution archive project, funded by the fantastic Old Edinburgh Club Jean Guild grants scheme. We are on the hunt for a portrait - can you help?

An elderly man sits on a stone wall cradling a young child.

Alexander Mill, "Prince of Indexers", assistant librarian at the Signet Library for over sixty years (1873-1935), with his grandson c. 1930. The last here to remember David Laing, Mill's index to Scottish Court of Session Papers is still in constant use, the only one of its kind.

Our Legal Heritage: Perth lawyers celebrate 200 years of Society of Procurators Robert Macduff-Duncan WS recalls the two-century-long history of the Society of Procurators and Solicitors in the City and County of Perth. On 8th July 1825, the Society of Procurators in Perth was fo...

The Society of Procurators in Perth are celebrating their bicentenary. Writer to the Signet Robert Macduff Duncan tells the story today for Scottish Legal News: www.scottishlegal.com/articles/our...

From the 1934 Revision through to the first few post-colonial years and the merger with Tanganyika, but no earlier unfortunately. (And ironically still found only on an in-house card catalogue)

This copy of the Scottish Licensing Act of 1903 at the @signetlibrary.bsky.social today, with some very on topic advertising.

Our upgrade is complete (and we have also resolved issues accessing our catalogue via the new Firefox v.140 and this is now back to normal).

A screenshot of the front page of the Signet Library's online catalogue.

A quick heads-up that our online catalogue will be offline for an upgrade on Wednesday morning (9th July) - all being well, we'll be back by lunchtime.

A screenshot of the front page of the Signet Library's online catalogue.

A quick heads-up that our online catalogue will be offline for an upgrade on Wednesday morning (9th July) - all being well, we'll be back by lunchtime.

The domed and arcaded frontage of Robert Adam's proposed College of Justice, incorporating a new Signet Library.

Diagram of the floorplan and wall elevations of Robert Adam's Signet Library

Elevation of part of Robert Adam's design for new premises for the Signet Library and Advocates Library within the College of Justice, with a rusticated lower level.

To commemorate the 297th birthday of the great Scottish architect Robert Adam, his drawings - amongst his last - for a new Signet Library in Royal Mile premises for the College of Justice in Edinburgh.

This book of instruction for newly qualified legal clerks in 1727, discovered yesterday by @lixmount.bsky.social at the @signetlibrary.bsky.social has several detailed pages on how to ‘write well’. Anyone who has toiled over a page of Secretary Hand might find it of interest..

Congratulations to all involved in the superb new Aberdeen Student Law Review, especially to our former WS Summer Scholars Christiana Cameron, Valentina Menendez Ron and Matthew Paton. Lady Dorrian writes that it “demonstrates the strength of legal scholarship and analysis at the University”

Title page of 1777 pamphlet reading A scheme for establishing and carrying on the woollen manufacture in Dundee. Printed by T. Colvill 1777.

Internal pages of a 1777 pamphlet about woollen manufacture in Dundee. The pages are decorated by printer's borders and indented capitals.

The final page of a pamphlet encouraging the establishment of woollen manufacture in Dundee, which ends in saying that printed copies were to be handed out for free and subscriptions to be taken at the shops of James More and Robert Nicoll, booksellers in Dundee. Dated April 28th 1777.

This may be the only surviving copy of this 1770s proposal for woollen manufacture in Dundee: we can't trace more, and given that this predates jute in Dundee, we wonder if a digital facsimile might be of interest to e.g. the Verdant Works, the universities and city library, the McManus Gallery etc?

Examining application forms of 1836 for entry to the John Watson Institution as part of @kgbaston.bsky.social’s project to document and research the archive of the School held by the @signetlibrary.bsky.social
This form has a letter still attached by a sealing wafer.

Two men carry a sofa upholstered in dark leather up a grand staircase.

Two sofas in a pilastered apartment with a large round table on the carpet between them. Portraits line the walls.

Looking up at a grand staircase under a toplit cupola with a pair of men carrying a large sofa upholstered in dark leather. The walls are panelled and carry pictures.

The return of our historic c. 1820 Regency sofas after restoration and reupholstering. They were originally made by the Chippendale of Scotland, William Trotter, at his manufactury on Canal Street. Photographs by @johockey.bsky.social

An exhibition of work by photographers Thomas Annan, James Craig Annan and Country Life staff photographer A.E. Henson prior to Professor Godfrey Evans' lecture on Hamilton Palace at the Signet Library last night.

Thanks to this terrific funding we are already some 149 records into the project and learning more and more about the social networks and milieu of the early John Watson's Institution. Much more to come: watch this space.

A display today at the @signetlibrary.bsky.social by @lixmount.bsky.social featuring Slezer’s views of Edinburgh and Dunotter (the ships!), William Stukeley’s illustration of Avebury, and a dining table-sized map of Glasgow (1842)

Text reading "Then we learned the method: which was to take an impression of the seal, then carefully to break it, and afterwards, first slightly heating the surface of the wax, to press the counterfeit stamp precisely as it had been done before, so that there was no alteration of position, nor outward appearance of any kind to show that the seal had been tampered with."

A major addition to the WS Society's Heritage Portfolio site today in the shape of @johockey.bsky.social 's essay "Minding Your Beeswax. Seals and Surveillance: The Post Office in the 19th Century" on an extraordinary episode of native espionage: www.wssociety-heritage.co.uk/seals-and-su...

An absolute treat this week at the @signetlibrary.bsky.social, A.S. Boyd’s Glasgow Men and Women, 1905, every page filled with delightful depictions of Glasgow people at work and play.

This post details his life and prolific works.
bearalley.blogspot.com/2019/02/a-s-...

Back to Leith with this ‘Guide to the Forth, Leith to Stirling’ by the Galloway Saloon Steam Packet Company in 1898, complete with fold out balloon map of the river. Part of the Travel Guide Collection at the @signetlibrary.bsky.social

At the @signetlibrary.bsky.social today, this 1903 copy of ‘Glasgow and Lanarkshire Illustrated’, published by the Hamilton Herald, New Brunswick.
‘Come for the advertising, stay for the advertising’

Leaves from a pair of short texts on early Scottish music in the hand of the antiquarian Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe (1781-1851) in Signet Library collections. Unpublished? but difficult to date. The first page mentions Writer to the Signet and historian William Tytler (1711-1792)