The Strathearn Gallery in Crieff

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hamish gilchrist

Hamish served his apprenticeship with an excellent journeyman who taught him his trade.  This was at St Cuthbert’s Co-operative, where the stables for the Edinburgh milk horses were attached to a workshop which undertook the repairs for the Royal Mews.  One of the apprentice’s tasks was to put rims on the wheels of the royal coaches so that they could be fitted with rubber tyres.  Hamish was also part of the team which made the gun carriage used to carry the coffin at Churchill’s funeral.

On completing his apprenticeship, Hamish moved into the twentieth century with a vengeance – his next job was working on nuclear submarines at Rosyth naval dockyard.  From there he went into teaching, relishing the opportunity to pass on to others the skills which he had learned from his journeymen.  Until recently, he lectured at Telford College, Edinburgh and now works full-time on his metal sculptures.  His work is in collections world-wide, including birds of prey for Saudi Arabian Princes. 

Hamish uses mild steel rods for the head and body, welding them together and then using heat and grinding to achieve the finished shape.  When sculpting a bird, he always begins with the eyes, which are rounded-off bolts, and then the head to ensure that he gets the proportions right for the rest of the figure.  The wings are cut from sheet metal and, as each individually-made feather is a different length, this is a painstaking process.  The final patina is achieved by adding other metals such as copper, bronze or brass. 

Hamish uses different techniques for different pieces.  Usually people anxiously clean oil off seabirds but he employs it as a finish on his metal cormorants.  Because steel rusts, he practises the old gunsmith’s trick of protecting it with a blacken: the feathers are heated until they are red-hot and then dipped in oil.  This results in a dramatic chip-pan-fire effect but when the flames have died down the pieces end up with a natural-looking sheen.  The completed model is then mounted on a heavy stone base so that the bird looks as if it has just alighted on a rock.  From start to finish, each piece can take up to 50 hours.

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