August 12th 2020.The Buttercup is a tale of one man's enterprise and incredible generosity. Kathryn Morrison (2020) Buttercup Dairy Company. Rather different to the run-of-the-mill lack of engagement and communication of so many online businesses.īill Scott (2011) The Buttercup: the remarkable story of Andrew Ewing and the Buttercup Dairy Company. It was simply a neat example of connecting with an online customer and linking services and the business to the bookshop, even in these times. The email told me about the store (and invited me to visit), its events (real and digital) and its involvement in local festivals and so on. But it also told me that the supplier was the on-line arm of Far From the Madding Crowd, Linlithgow, awarded the best independent bookshop in Scotland in 2017. The email told me the book was on its way. A couple of clicks on AbeBooks and it was on its way to me. As noted above, in this digital, lockdown era, tracking down a copy of Bill Scott’s book was easy. There was also a further part of the story. It has also made me want to visit some of the surviving examples (a list as at 2011 is in Bill Scott’s book). Others are better placed than I to reflect on the design, the style and the significance, but I have really enjoyed simply reading the story and seeing the images. The fact that elements of the great design and tiling can still be seen is even nicer. There are good and bad parts to the history of the Buttercup Dairy Company but it has had a place in Scottish retailing and Scotland’s towns. Getting a copy of this in this modern era was only a few clicks and a post office delivery away (if only there was a local bookshop) and more of the story was revealed. Kathryn Morrison’s blog also pointed to a book from a decade ago by Bill Scott, which I had missed at the time. He also kindly sent me the photograpahs of the shop front and his practice office and permitted their re-use below. His story on taking over the shop and uncovering more of the history has been reported here. Then I realised that Malcolm Fraser was the partner in the refurbishment of the Warrender Park Road, Edinburgh store (and its reveal of the historic fascia) for his new practice office (see The old and the new mixing together. A tweet about visiting a good store survival (in design and tile terms) in Carnoustie added to the story. It is an interesting retail story in its own right and her blog is well worth a visit and a read (I am not going to summarise the story here, so you might as well give her blog a visit). Given my interest in ghostsigns and design (though I am an amateur) and more recently, surviving Welsh dairies in London, something must have stuck in my mind about the style of this forgotten business.īut then in August, Kathryn Morrison produced her blog post on the Buttercup Dairy Company and summarised its fascinating, and in store terms, beautiful history. I think I also have a pre-pandemic notion of one of their shopfronts being recovered and restored this year (but see later). The iconic image above must have come to my attention at some point in a discussion of tiles (probably from as it was familiar to me. It was not a business that I was aware of, and it turns out to have an interesting story, including visually. That is how I came to learn about the Buttercup Dairy Company. I doubt whether this would have occurred quite like this pre-digital era. There are others as well ( see the discussion of Burtons in previous posts and the recurring themes of ghostsigns), but from Lindsey and Kathryn I have been exposed to fascinating and informed discussion of retail and shop history. It really is so much more simpler and easier than decades ago.Ī good example of this is the fascinating and informative work of Lindsay Lennie ( and Kathryn Morrison ( on historic shops and retail store design. One of the most enjoyable things about social media is the ease of connectivity to people, their work and interesting (well, to me) things.
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