MacDougall Collection

Miss Hope MacDougall, daughter, sister and aunt to three successive chiefs of the Clan MacDougall started her collection with a single wooden spoon in the 1950s and amassed thousands of items before her death in 1998. Her passionate interest in people’s ordinary working lives, particularly in a rural or coastal setting has ensured an extraordinary selection of icons of West Highland Life have been left for the benefit and education of the nation.

The Collection tells the story of working and domestic life in the Highlands and Islands for the past 200 years and more, with around 5,000 objects from croft, village and town, from the land and the sea.

But this Collection is more than a record of local life, A knife from the Sahara, an Afganistani glove; these, and many like them, are also key elements of the Collection. Comparing lives – travelling people’s worlds, whether Mull or Maori.