Burrell the benefactor is the talk of Probus
KEN LAWTON
The latest speaker at the Probus Club was Harvey Littlejohn who talked first about Sir William Burrell and then ‘The Thief Within’.
Harvey is a long-time member of the club, holding a variety of executive posts since 1992.
He is also known for his roles in East Kilbride Speakers Club, Kilbride Burns Club and Education in Retirement.
But the biggest club he was part of – for 50 years – was Rangers FC, rising from parking attendant to working in the press box, before latterly working as a stadium tour guide, all the while working full-time with Rolls-Royce for 25 years.
He began his talk by outlining the collection amassed by the shipping magnate Sir William Burrell.
Having built up an international shipping company with his brother, it was sold off.
During WWI, they built tramp steamers weighing 4000 - 5000 tons. They were useful in as much they could get right inshore where the larger vessels couldn’t.
The company mantra was to buy and build at rock bottom prices, still with that Clydeside quality, and sell high to make large profits.
The sale of the company allowed him to travel all over the world, bringing back art, architecture, ceramics, stained glass and much more.
Knighted in 1927, he had collected some 6000 items between 1944 to 1957, all of which he donated to the Glasgow Corporation along with £450 to house the collection within four miles of Killearn or 16 miles from central Glasgow.
Alas at the time there was no suitable sites to be had until Pollok House, the ancestral home of the Stirling Maxwell family, located in Pollok Country Park, was gifted to Glasgow in 1966.
By this point another 2000 items had been donated. Finally a new museum was opened in the grounds in 1983 to house the collection.
At this point, Harvey showed a short film from 1996, featuring his own son Professor David Littlejohn, the Philips Professor of analytical chemistry at Strathclyde University.
It was about a new problem for museum curators and conservators as first discovered in the Burrell Collection.
From the significant analysis done under Professor Littlejohn’s lead, Strathclyde University gained a reputation for analytical sciences in forensic archaeology.
Various activities were shown to include this invisible problem as ‘indoor pollution’. Often when private collections are donated to a museum rarely is their money included for the ongoing conservation.
However things are now changing and are better understood. Believe it or not, some of the early plastics from the 1920s (Bakelite) are beginning to show deterioration.
After such an interesting and informative film Harvey took questions to end his talk.
The next meeting will be on March 4 at which Richard Phillips will talk about The Defence of the Realm.
For further information visit EK Probus’s web site which can be found at https://ekprobus.wordpress. com