Mary Queen of Scot's Death Mask

All website owners have access to statistics relating to visitors finding and using their website. When it comes to people using search engines like google I find that most of my visitors are ones who have entered search terms relating to wedding photography such as wedding photographer Edinburgh or wedding photographers Edinburgh (plural). This of course is helpful to me as being an Edinburgh wedding photographer I need to know that brides and grooms can find me easily enough when using a search engine when looking for a photographer. As you may recall, early this year I revamped my website adjusting the focus to my four core area’s of business; weddings, photo-shoots, pets and commercial photography. The image content of my website was also adjusted and weighted in favour of weddings which is my primary work load, so if you were to add up all the different photos on my site the majority will be wedding photographs.

The photograph you see on the blog today, Mary Queen of Scot’s Death Mask, has been on my website for quite some time, mainly because it is very rare, unusual and as I’m a lover of history I find it very interesting. However, it was one of the images I almost removed after making my website changes until I perused the above mentioned stats. After all the wedding photography related search terms “Mary Queen of Scot’s Death Mask” is surprisingly one of the most frequently entered phrases on google and leads to a huge amount of visitor traffic. Hence, I changed my mind and kept the photograph in my commercial gallery.

The photo itself was taken whilst doing a magazine shoot for The People’s Friend magazine a few years ago. I was sent to Lennoxlove House which has strong connections with Mary Queen of Scot’s and is the home of the Duke of Hamilton. The Duke is Scotland’s premier peer, so if ever Scotland became an independent nation he would become the King. The Hamilton family have very close connections to Queen Mary and the Duke himself has some of the finest and most valuable collection of Mary Queen of Scot’s memorabilia. These include the Death Mask and her Silver Casket which is reputedly the most valuable piece of silverware in the land.

I was privileged to be given a guided tour of Lennoxlove by the Duke himself and thereafter given freedom to roam the building and take photographs for the magazine. The Queen Mary Death Mask is one of three in existence. Two are genuine, one is a fake. The Duke himself refused to be drawn on which one was the fake as I believe a certain amount of mystery adds to the intrigue, but given that virtually all of the items in his collection are personal gifts from Mary to his members of his family together with the close ties between Mary, Lennoxlove and the Hamiltons, I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusion.

Anyway this is one of the most popular and viewed photographs on my website. The reason I write about it today is simply after checking my website stats this week I see that it has been searched for several times each and every day! If you are one of these folk who has visited my website searching for this image then I hope you may find this little bit of extra information regarding the picture of interest.