iDovecot StudiosOld Town
Elizabeth Blackadder: A Life in Colour
Still lifes, botanical studies and prints by Elizabeth Blackadder alongside tapestries and rugs from her 50-year collaboration with Dovecot, incl. the new rug The Red Bouquet.
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One painting on the balcony is simply of a favourite jacket: White Still-life with Rainbow and Embroidered Jacket. Elizabeth Blackadder loved textiles, and from 1967 Dovecot's weavers turned her pictures into more than 30 tapestries and rugs. If you've ever photographed an outfit instead of wearing it out, this is the oil-paint version.
Paintings, drawings and prints from the Royal Scottish Academy collection hang beside those textiles, from the 1960s to around 2014. Her cats and flowers share the tapestry Cats at Play, and a new rug after her 1975 painting The Red Bouquet is shown for the first time. You walk the wide balcony of the old Infirmary Street Baths, above the former pool where the weavers now work.
The Scotsman's Duncan Macmillan gave it four stars: "not a huge show", but "very well chosen". Entry is free and every work is for sale. Hours are short: weekdays 12pm to 3pm, Saturday 10am to 5pm, closed 24, 29 and 31 October and 7 and 11 November.
Look for
The Red Bouquet rug
A new hand-tufted rug made by Dovecot's studio team after Blackadder's bold 1975 painting, shown in public for the first time.
The embroidered jacket
Look for White Still-life with Rainbow and Embroidered Jacket, a painting of one of the favourite jackets Blackadder wore.
Cats at Play
A tapestry where her cats and her flowers turn up together in the same picture.
Still life with Indian Cloth
A 1967 still life built around a patterned cloth, which the Scotsman's critic found startlingly jazzy for its date.
Good for
- An Hour Or Less
- Cheap Culture
Skip if
You want a big retrospective: the Scotsman's critic called it "not a huge show".
Also at Dovecot Studios
On now nearby
Nearby
Image credits
9
- Elizabeth Blackadder: A Life in ColourCourtesy of Dovecot Studios
- Blood and Guts: The Twists and Turns of Edinburgh's Medical HistorySurgeons' Hall Museums
- The Rupture: No condition is permanentCourtesy the artist. © Kiri Dalena
- Scotland's First WarriorsNational Museums Scotland
- Dovecot StudiosMike Wilkinson, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Surgeons' Hall MuseumsRConnor21 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Talbot Rice GalleryVysotsky / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Museum of ChildhoodPretzelles / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- National Museum of ScotlandMaccoinnich / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0