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✅ Full moon✅ Puppies✅ BatsA blue moon may only appear once in a while 🌕But you can find Japanese woodblock prints all ye...
31/05/2026

✅ Full moon
✅ Puppies
✅ Bats

A blue moon may only appear once in a while 🌕

But you can find Japanese woodblock prints all year round at the National Museum of Scotland. Like these ones!

This triptych by Keisei Eisen depicts a moonlit night. Two women are waiting beside a palanquin (sedan chair) whilst a geisha reads a book and bats fly overhead. And let’s not forget the puppies playing by their feet 🥹

Find them on Level 5 in the Exploring East Asia gallery.

29/05/2026

The countdown is on… Scotland’s First Warriors opens in ONE MONTH ⚔️

This striking parade helmet was found at Trimontium, a Roman fort near Newstead in the Scottish Borders.

Rather than being made for combat, this was likely worn in parades and ceremonies and was designed to look terrifying and project power 💪

It is just one of the extraordinary objects that will feature in Scotland’s First Warriors - a free exhibition that explores the origins and impact of conflict in prehistoric Scotland.

Scotland’s First Warriors runs from 27 June 2026 to 16 May 2027 at the National Museum of Scotland.

28/05/2026

300 years ago, a certified ROCKstar by the name of James Hutton was born.

Hutton was a founder of modern geology, and is most famous for proposing that the Earth was old. He did this through the concept of deep or geological time (A.K.A the 4.54-billion-year history of Earth).

Hutton understood deep time as:

'No vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end' 🌍

While the scale of time was longer than Hutton could have possibly imagined, he paved the way for the next generations of Geologists to ‘read’ rocks and fill in the gaps.

Dr Rachel Walcott explains how Hutton understood that rocks were far older than we could have imagined - all from spotting patterns in a Scottish cliff face 🤯

26/05/2026

PoV you’ve got the front seat on the Tractor Trailer at the National Museum of Rural Life.

It’s the second best seat in the house for tractor fans.

(The best, if you ask us, is a bench in the Tractor Store).

Head to our website to read more about tractors in our collection: https://www.nms.ac.uk/discover-catalogue/tractors-at-the-national-museum-of-rural-life

Or, simply enjoy 60 seconds of ‘Dougal the Shoogle’.

Toot toot! 🚜

22/05/2026

This rock is a record of the end of non-avian dinosaurs ☄️

It’s from the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary (or K-T boundary). The K-T boundary is the moment in the geological record where the meteorite landed and caused the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs.

By finding chemical traces of the meteorite event in our sample – like nickel and chromium – we can connect this little rock to one of the defining events on Earth.

Preparing a sample like this for chemical trace analysis has many steps and tools. Luckily, our Earth Systems analyst Bob Gooday was on hand to show us the process.

Head to YouTube to watch the full process in action: https://youtu.be/GRs-BYPnXB8

21/05/2026

We’ve got two words for you.

TOE BEANS 🐾

We have a great collection of netsuke. These adorable carvings have gorgeous details all round them. And, importantly, a 360-degree view can sometimes include teeny weeny toe beans.

Thankfully our curator Dr Louise Reilly was on hand to show us these details up close.

Japanese traditional robes didn't have pockets, so pouches and small day-to-day items were hung from men’s belts by cords. The cord was secured with an ornamental toggle called a netsuke.

It was important that the netsuke were rounded and didn’t have any sharp edges that might catch on the robes. Making this charming fellow fashionable AND functional.

This traditional Korean outfit was made for a little girl over a century ago. 104 year-old Mary Davidson Smith was born...
20/05/2026

This traditional Korean outfit was made for a little girl over a century ago.

104 year-old Mary Davidson Smith was born in Seoul, South Korea. As a child, Mary was given a handmade silk hanbok by her nanny, which still survives to this day.

Mary went on to live all across the world including London, Canada and the USA before settling in Edinburgh. She donated her outfit to National Museums Scotland when she was in her 80s.

Mary is now a resident at Care UK's Murrayside, and the team recently organised for her to see the outfit on display.

You too can see Mary’s hanbok in our Patterns of Life gallery 🧵

1. Mary pictured wearing the hanbok c. 1920s
2. Detailed image of the jeogori (jacket)
3. Mary reunited with her hanbok in the Patterns of Life gallery, National Museum of Scotland. Credit: Stewart Attwood

18/05/2026

We love tartan.

So we’re extremely excited about this recent acquisition.

Because this sizable collection will reveal SO MUCH about the mass manufacture of tartans.

This archive of tartan was donated by Stuart Paton, a great great grandson of one of the founders of J.D. Paton and Company.

The company was founded in the mid 19th Century in Tillicoultry and was one of the largest manufacturers of tartan in Scotland. The factory closed in 1965, but these samples were kept by the Paton family. In 2025 it was donated to National Museums Scotland.

The collection is a rich archive of different designs. How many? We’re not entirely sure yet!

As you can see, there is still a lot for us to catalogue. But this will join the rest of the tartan in our fashion and modern Scottish history collections and allow us to research more about production of tartan in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Big thanks to Lilly and Layla from the UofG College of Arts and Humanities Museum Studies postgraduate course who have been helping us catalogue the collection.

We look forward to sharing more stories from this amazing archive 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

15/05/2026

🎧 What’s our curator Ian Brown listening to?

As usual, he’s listening to the sound of a Supermarine Spitfire engine.

You can see our Spitfire on display at the National Museum of Flight ✈️

(Bring your own audio soundtrack).

Imagine sending your mail to sea, not knowing if it would ever make it to land ✉️ The islanders of St Kilda would someti...
13/05/2026

Imagine sending your mail to sea, not knowing if it would ever make it to land ✉️

The islanders of St Kilda would sometimes put letters inside containers like this mail-boat float. It was sealed with tar, and attached to a bladder. They would then throw it into the sea, to drift ashore. Mail-boats could wash up as far away as the coast of Norway ⛵

St Kilda is an archipelago 41 miles off the west coast of Benbecula. The final residents were evacuated in 1930, but items like this mail boat remind us of their unique and challenging way of life.

See this mail-boat up close at the National Museum of Rural Life 🚜

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