The colour blue gets a bad rep 😢
The January blues? Why does that have to be a BAD thing 💙
Check out this gorgeous specimen from our geology collection.
The beautiful blue of this azurite is due to copper.
If copper ore is near the Earth’s surface, it can re-combine with carbon, oxygen and sulphur to create new minerals like azurite and its sister mineral malachite (spot the green parts 💚)
But azurite is much rarer. It’s unstable in low CO2 environments, and will slowly change to malachite over time. We call this process ⭐ pseudomorphing ✨
Azurite was once used as a blue "azure" pigment in paints and to colour glass. Artisans would grind up the crystals to create a blue powder, before adding egg yolk or oil 🧑🎨
We certainly won't be grinding up this specimen - it's far too pretty as it is!
Got any other minerals you'd like to see? Let us know in the comments 👇
BREAKING NEWS: sometimes, solids aren’t solid at all - they’re actually liquid 🤯
And you can come and see the demonstration that proves it, at the National Museum of Scotland.
This Pitch Drop Demonstration began in Edinburgh in 1902 🔬
It was designed to show that the solid looking substance in the top of the funnel…
…isn’t solid at all.
The little nuggets at the bottom have slowly dripped out of the funnel over the last (almost) 125 years.
So slowly in fact, that it’s only happened twice in that time.
Watch to find out more about the Pitch Drop demonstration 💧
And.. maybe come and see us every day for the next 125 years, just to be sure you don’t miss another drop?
Our Tartan display has had a makeover ✨
Say hiya to the conservators, curators and members of our displays team who spruced up this section of Scotland Transformed gallery.
Objects to note include:
📖 The INFAMOUS Vestiarium Scoticum by the Sobieski Stuart brothers
📨 Mail order tartan? A letter to William Wilson & Sons of Bannockburn placing an order, dated 23 June 1812
🏴 Souvenirs made in Mauchline
👗 and this ADORABLE nineteenth century boy’s dress. You’re going to want to put your volume on loud to hear the team’s reaction 🔊
Pop in and visit it next time you’re near the National Museum of Scotland 👋
We’re getting towards the end of the year, and what a year it’s been for our Members ✨
We’ve been looking at our list to see who’s been naughty and who’s been nice (spoiler: they’re all nice) and some interesting stats caught our eye 👀
It seems that one of our lovely Members visited our Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition 28 times!
Another equally gorgeous Member booked themselves into Game On a whopping 18 times too 🕹️
We did the maths, and that’s approx 345 games of Mario Kart 64.
Thank you to all of our Members for your support this year. If you’d like to give someone the gift that keeps on giving - which this year apparently was 345 games of Mario Kart 64 - then pop over to our website to buy your Gift Membership: https://www.nms.ac.uk/support-us/membership/gift-membership
What a lovely way to start 2025.
Beetles are for life, not just for Christmas
But some beetles are KINDA Christmassy 🎅
Like these super shiny specimens from our collection 🪲
They’re Scarab beetles, part of the ‘Anoplognathus’ genus, but are informally known as ‘Christmas beetles’ because they come out around this time of year 🎄
🇦🇺 If you’re reading this and thinking ‘but this simply isn’t fair - I’ve never seen a Christmas beetle!’ then that’s probably because they live in Australia and Tasmania, so you’d need to go there to be in with a chance of seeing one in the wild 🔍
Fun fact: some of these specimens are over 200 years old! They're just as dazzling as the day they arrived, as their iridescence is a result of structural colour, rather than pigment ✨
If you want to know more about our insect collection and how it is used for research, head to our website: https://www.nms.ac.uk/our-impact/national-work/training-and-guidance-for-museums/caring-for-entomology-collections/why-do-museums-collect-insects
Look what our friend Lewis Chesspiece has found on our tree… 🎄
It’s the greatest gift of all - a Gift Membership! It contains unlimited free entry to our exhibitions, the National Museum of Flight, and the National Museum of Rural Life.
There’s also exclusive Member events, a magazine featuring behind the scenes news and in-depth articles, as well as discounts in our cafes and shops.
Head to the link in our bio to find out more about the gift that keeps on giving 🎁
If there was ever a mineral that benefitted from a spot of sun, it's labradorite.
Catch it in the right light and it reveals a spectrum of colours 🌈
This effect is known as ‘labradorescence’ and occurs due to light reflecting off microscopic surfaces inside the mineral. The different colours you see are controlled by the distance between these surfaces
Labradorescence only forms under very specific circumstances. The mineral needs to be of a precise elemental composition and the crystals need to cool slowly enough to allow the internal structure to form 💎
This means that while labradorite is found in many places (including Scotland 🏴), the truly flashy specimens are found in Canada, Russia and Norway ✨
Got any minerals you'd like to see (weather and sunlight permitting)? Let us know in the comments 👇
🏴 Happy St Andrew’s Day 🏴
What better way to celebrate than with our national drink.
Believe it or not, this ashet (that’s Scots for ‘serving tray’) is composed entirely of waste products from the whisky making process. It’s a new acquisition to the collection, and tells the story of how makers in the whisky industry are finding ways to make their processes more sustainable.
♻ The tray’s base is made from ‘draff’ - a waste malt material left over from the alcohol production process. The draff was sourced from Arbikie Distillery, based in Inverkeilor, Angus.
🔨The upcycled copper rim was sourced from one of the world's oldest fabricators of whisky stills, McMillan Coppersmiths in East Lothian.
👨🎨 The maker, Aymeric Renoud Draff studio is a designer and fabricator based in Dundee. He specialises in creating bespoke pieces of furniture and frequently collaborates with distilleries and breweries.
Watch how these makers worked together to create something beautiful for our National Collection: https://youtu.be/MzNsHjEYX-8
🥃 Sláinte!
If there’s one thing we do well, it’s rural history.
Luckily, there’s not just one thing we do well, so that’s fine.
But today, we’ve been exploring the collections at the National Museum of Rural Life with a behind-the-scenes look in the object stores, thanks to our curator of Modern and Rural History, Ailsa.
We’ve seen baskets.
We’ve seen flails.
We’ve seen shelves and shelves of artefacts dedicated solely to the art of milking.
The study store houses over 6000 objects - milk based and otherwise - and lining the walls are beautifully crafted scale models of agricultural machines and equipment that date back to the 19th century 👩🌾
Visit the National Museum of Rural Life and learn about the land, people and ways of working that have shaped Scotland’s rural history. More information and tickets are available on our website 🚜 : https://www.nms.ac.uk/national-museum-of-rural-life
There are (literally!) thousands of stories to choose from inside the museum - so let us know which tales you’d like us to tell, and objects you’d like to hear more about, in the comments below 👇 10 points if it’s milk.
Deck the halls with boughs of…Dolly? 🐑
Our tree is UP
And it’s sustainable.
♻️ Our natural tree is from a supplier in East Lothian, and the decorations have been reused from previous years.
Is it too early to put up a tree? Debatable! But it’s never too early to enjoy a bit of sustainable seasonal cheer 💚
Come see it at the National Museum of Scotland ✨
It ✨ gleamed like gold ✨ 1800 years ago when it was worn by a Roman soldier.
🧩 It was in 100 fragments when it was discovered in the Scottish borders in 1906.
💪 Now, it's all been pieced back together and is on display at the National Museum of Scotland.
…just in time for the new Gladiator film, in the hope that Paul Mescal will come visit it. We can dream!
Head to the Early People gallery to see the newly-conserved brass Roman arm guard - the only intact example of its kind.
Or, if you’d like to watch a five minute film documenting the conservation of this unique object, head over to our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkwBxPA0Gdo