National Museums Scotland, of conservator Diana de Bellaigue with a silver casket believed to have belonged to Mary, Queen of Scots, ahead of it going on tour around Scotland. It is thought that the casket was given to Mary by her first husband, François II of France, and came to Scotland with her in 1561 after his death in 1560
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00:00 My name is Diana de Beleg and I am an artefact conservator at National Museums Scotland.
00:05 When the casket came to the museum it was covered in a dark layer of tarnish
00:09 so we thought to show it off to its best we would clean it here and in order to do that we used a
00:17 very gentle technique of cleaning because the silver has a very fine layer of gold over the
00:23 decoration in some areas and traditional methods of cleaning silver abrade the surface which can
00:29 result in the loss of that very fine layer of gold which obviously we didn't want to do.
00:33 So we used this technique of electrolytic reduction this means that using a sort of pen device
00:40 I was able to clean the silver and remove that layer of tarnish without doing any damage to the
00:47 gold beneath. I've really enjoyed working on the casket I felt very lucky to work on such a
00:52 beautiful object and be able to see it really up close. My name is Anna Groundwater a principal
00:58 curator in Scottish history and archaeology department here at National Museums Scotland.
01:04 What we have here is the Mary Queen of Scots silver casket a superb example of early
01:10 renaissance French silver made in Paris between around 1490 to 1510. Very little of this kind of
01:18 silver survives to today so it's exceptionally rare and the reason I think for its survival
01:24 is its historic association with Mary Queen of Scots. It's thought that Mary was given the casket
01:31 by her husband-to-be the Dauphin François to whom she was engaged in France in the 1550s and that
01:40 she brought it back with her to Scotland following his death in 1560 when she returned to Scotland
01:46 in 1561. The casket was associated with Mary at some particularly high and low points in her life
01:54 it has a dramatic history with her. First of all it comes back to France with her we can imagine
02:02 her with it in her bedroom at Holyrood House for instance but it's also part of her downfall
02:10 because in 1567 Mary came up against the confederate lords following her marriage
02:17 her unpopular marriage to Lord Bothwell and she was forced to concede defeat and abdicate the
02:24 throne. At this point the silver casket was seized by the Privy Council and the Earl of Morton who
02:31 ran it. It was fastened by a lock he is said to have ordered the removal the forcing of that lock
02:38 and then the casket was opened to reveal what was then subsequently a year later said to be
02:44 a number of letters and love poems. These were brought along with the casket to a hearing
02:53 against Mary ordered by Elizabeth at Parliament in Westminster in 1568 and when the casket was
03:01 opened these letters were revealed that incriminated Mary in an illicit relationship
03:09 with Lord Bothwell her third husband and implicated her in the murder of her second husband Lord
03:16 Darnley. So the casket's incredibly heavy it's about 1.8 kilos that's you know two bags of sugar
03:23 and that's all solid silver in monetary terms a very valuable item. In France objects like this
03:32 were ordered to be surrendered in the later 17th century by Louis XIV to help pay for his wars.
03:39 The fact that this casket appears to have come to Scotland with Mary means that it's been preserved
03:46 so it was saved when all that other French silver was lost so it's just such an incredibly rare
03:52 example of a casket like this. The lid of the casket is encrusted with this scroll-like and
04:00 floral decoration, strapwork it's known. That's quite classic for the Renaissance in the period
04:06 but going around the sides is a different scheme of decoration pinpricked images of hunting scenes,
04:14 flora and fauna, there's a running stag, a devoted dog at the heels, a little bunny rabbit.
04:21 The casket reappears in the historical record in the mid-17th century and in the 1670s we know that
04:30 it's bought by the Duchess of Hamilton from her mother-in-law's estate the Marchioness of Argyle
04:38 and it comes into the possession of the Hamilton family in whose hands it remains until National
04:45 Museum Scotland acquired it in 2022. The casket is on semi-permanent display here in National
04:53 Museum Scotland on Chambers Street but we're very excited that it's going off on a little bit of a
05:00 tour first of all to Kirkcudbrie in November and then next year to the Stirling Smith Gallery.
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