The Design and Decoration of the Palace of Bokes: The First Century 1812-1908
The Signet Library Online Exhibition for 2026 begins with the remarkable recent discovery of a large cache of architectural drawings for the building created by its magnificent architect William Stark in 1812. The drawings are things of astonishing beauty as well as interest and throw up the question: how was the Signet Library designed and decorated in its early years?
The exhibition seeks to answer this question in three parts.
Part One – Designing the Signet Library: the William Stark Drawings of 1812
The story of the 1812 drawings through letters and minute books, showing how Stark responded to the twin challenges of lighting and design that the building presented to him. These drawings show the rapid evolution of his thinking on his final masterpiece.
A recounting of how the WS Society transformed the stair and lobby between the Lower and Upper Halls into one of the first truly public arenas for art in Georgian and early Victorian Edinburgh.
Part Three – Decorating the Signet Library – the First 100 Years
How do you decorate interiors like the Signet Library’s? This is the first narrative ever advanced of the paint schemes with which the Library was decorated from its opening in November 1815 through to the 1960s, who was involved in them and how they related to the circumstances and styles of the day.