Throughout the second half of the eighteenth century, the interiors of Georgian Edinburgh came to be designed with an elegance and refinement composed of clean lines and decorative detail. They took the hallmarks of the classicism of the Greeks and the Romans and interpreted them in a modern form, which was termed neoclassicism.

Yet this was northern Europe, and while its citizens aspired to elegance and sophistication, comfort was also high on their list of priorities. In chilly Scotland, comfort meant warmth, and thus the fireplace took on a new-found architectural significance.

While the wealthy aristocracy favoured fireplaces of either monumental marble or meticulously carved limewood, these were beyond the means of the middle classes, despite their new-found affluence, and the impeccably proportioned fireplace of pine with Adam’s composition (compo) mouldings rapidly became an architectural icon of the age.

It is, perhaps, this success which has left us with remarkably little knowledge of their exact origins. What we do know is that a young Scottish architect named Robert Adam returned from his grand tour of Italy and the Adriatic with the intention of creating ‘a kind of revolution’ in architectural taste.