The Royal Club's Past President Robbie Scott is one of curling's great enthusiasts. He has a passion for the history of the sport, and indeed he has an extensive collection of memorabilia in his home in Pitlochry. He was instrumental recently in making sure that the Royal Club's own collection of artifacts was all collected together in one secure storage site, awaiting cataloguing.Perhaps you saw him on the Antiques Roadshow on Sunday night on BBC 1? I flagged this up a year ago, see here, when the programme was filmed at Blair Castle. Unfortunately, Robbie's participation was not included in the first programme that went out in the last series, but he did appear in a second programme from Blair that went out on Sunday. You can watch this on the BBC iPlayer until October 16, here.
With Robbie was Eve Muirhead, who's also a member of Dunkeld CC. They had, for expert Alastair Dickenson to examine, a silver jug which had been presented by the Duke of Atholl for competition among local curling clubs. Turns out that the jug was made in England in 1841, some twelve years before it was first presented for play. Dickenson even suggested that it had just been an item that the Duke had no further use for, so got rid of it to the curlers! I wonder. Does this mean that the engravings on the jug, and the silver stone on the lid, were later additions? All very interesting.
Forget what the expert said on value, an item like this is indeed priceless. As are Eve's World Junior Championship Gold Medals. She was wearing three of these when the programme was filmed. And she now has a fourth!
The illustration above is a screenshot from Sunday's programme.
