Somewhere in our past, a lone kilted figure looks out over a herd of Highland cattle, knee deep in heather and thistles. Through the mist, the pipes skirl, a towerhouse glowers and a burn tumbles, brown with peaty water running off the moors. It’s a scene from a shortbread tin: this is the heritage which Walter Scott invented for us in the 1820’s, and which the Victorians assidiously set to work, marketing their engineering might by pretending that its forges and steel mills were Brigadoon, not Bridgeton. Which, I guess, is why the spring clips we still use to clamp paper to a board are stamped “WAVERLEY”.
The bulldog clip is a seemingly simple wee gadget of tempered spring steel. It comes in many varieties, yet all consist of a barrel spring with two lever-shaped handles. Every household has several of them, tucked away in the back of a drawer, or the dusty reaches of the loft. I first relied on its vice-like when I was a schoolboy taking art classes– several sets of strong jaws clamped a large sheet of Fabriano paper to a board, and that move allowed me to go outside to sketch. Through its life, the bulldog clip evolved, and its highest evolution is the Waverley Clip.
The bulldog clip was reputedly invented at the end of the 19th Century in Birmingham, where experimental metallurgists developed modern spring steel, and where the British stationery industry grew up, centred on dip pen nib manufacturing. The technology quickly spread… MacNiven & Cameron was a firm of printers and stationers, originally founded as Nisbet MacNiven, a paper maker, in 1770 at Balerno. They developed as a stationery wholesaler, after moving into Edinburgh in 1788, and for many years they had a printing works at 23 Blair Street, in the heart of the Old Town. The brothers John and Donald Cameron became involved in 1840, and the firm’s name changed to MacNiven & Cameron in 1845.
Duncan Cameron, another brother, invented the Waverley nib: its narrow waist, with an upturned point rather than a convex point, took the extreme point of the pen off the paper and made writing smoother: it was first manufactured for the company by Gillott in 1864, and later by others. In 1881, the company diversified, and the Oban Times newspaper was acquired, and was run for a time by Duncan, then his son Waverley Cameron– the boy being named after the pen, rather than vice versa! As their business sought growth, MacNiven & Cameron were one of the first to develop the bulldog clip’s potential, and expanded their “Waverley” brand to include the Waverley Clip.
Premier Grip, which has been in production for a century, claims to be the “original bulldog clip”, but Myers make their Foldback clip, Rexel their Boston clip, and Perry their Victoria clip… all of which are variations on the same theme, yet the Waverley clip is perhaps the highest evolution. It bears no ornamentation, nor decorative tooling, just a simple fluting of the handles for strength. Its name, in chunky moderne lettering, is pressed into the steel lips of the clip. It’s appealing simply because it is the ultimate in unregarded objects– even though artists of all sorts come into close contact, and many folk must have pondered its origins, you’ll be damned hard pressed to find an enthusiast for bulldog clips!
The clip’s trade name and trade dress recalls the powerful reach of Walter Scott, author of the famous “Waverley novels”, the first of which was published in 1814; his portrait was habitually combined with the McNiven & Cameron’s slogan on product packaging: “They come as a Boon and a Blessing to men: The Pickwick, the Owl, and the Waverley Pen”. Scott is shown complete with bangs of flowing hair and a high collar, but of course he did not endorse the nib or the clip, since he died in before they went into production. Brands like Waverley are strong and almost incorruptible simply because we know that their reputation grew from quality and longevity, and they emerged before the onset of corporatism and the relentless cost-cutting which is really the destruction of value. If the clip was launched today, it would be pressed in plastic in a sweatshop factory east of Suez, then packaged to sell on price, rather than quality.
Eventually MacNiven & Cameron bought a factory at Watery Lane, Bordesley, Birmingham and manufactured clips, nibs and other things for themselves, from 1900 to 1964. By the 1960’s, the stock-in-trade of their factory was the barrel spring-type paper clip, although some nib manufaturing continued to the end, mainly for the Indian market. After that, the company was based at Waverley Works in Edinburgh: thus, some Waverley Clips are stamped “Made in England”, and later ones “Made in Scotland”. The remnants of the company then relocated again, still making stationery under the Waverley Cameron name, to Dunkeld Road in Blairgowrie. That too became the Waverley Works… which is where the Waverley clip ended its days.
MacNiven & Cameron’s progress follows a familiar trend: a slow decline from Victorian times, firstly they close an old factory in the Black Country, as engineering firms all around them retrench; then their offices in the heart of Edinburgh were shut– thanks to the inexorable rise of property values, the buildings were worth more than the business they contained; finally to a modern industrial unit in a small provincial town– always moving further north, to lower overheads and the margins of the industrial belt. The business disappeared– one day, Walter Scott will be rehabilitated– he fell spectacularly out of fashion at some point last century– but the clips are still going strong.
If you want to read more about our tartan traduction, I can suggest Murray Grigor’s Scotch Myths, Carl Dougall’s more serious-minded Painting the Forth Bridge, and McX by Todd McEwen, an outsider’s witty view of the Scots psyche.
Image from Maynard's Wine Gums advert – copyright Aardman Animation – used with permission.
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