Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. Tassie sent the gems impressions that produced for Catherine II of Russia, in four deliveries between 1781 and 1781. In addition to his impressions from antique gems, Tassie executed many large profile medallion portraits of his contemporaries, and these form the most original and definitely artistic class of his works. They were modelled in wax from the life or from drawings done from the life, and when this was impossible from other authentic sources. They were then cast in white enamel paste, the whole medallion being sometimes executed in this material; while in other cases the head only appears in enamel, relieved against a background of ground-glass tinted of a subdued color by paper placed behind. His first large enamel portrait was that of John Dolbon, son of Sir William Dolbon, Bart., modelled in 1793 or 1794; and the series possesses great historic interest, as well as artistic value, including as it does portraits of Adam Smith, Sir Henry Raeburn, Drs James Beattie, Hugh Blair, Black and Cullen, and many other celebrated men of the latter half of the 18th century. At the time of his death, in 1799, the collection of Tassie's works numbered about 20,000 pieces. His nephew William Tassie followed him in the business. Legacy In the 1830s, Tassie's pieces continued to be sold, and H. Laing, engraver and manufacturer of James Tassie's composition seals was selling licensed copies of Tassie's work from a shop at 32 Princes Street in the centre of Edinburgh. Moreover, during the 19th century, Andrew Dickson White, the first president of the Cornell University bought and offered to the University an extensive Tassie's daktyliotheca, purchased from a German manufacturer called Gustav Eichler (1801–77). In 2008, a bar in the Shawlands area of Glasgow was renamed "The James Tassie" in his honour. This bar is affectionately known to regular patrons as "The Tassies". Gallery References Attribution: Bibliography Gray, John Miller. James and William Tassie: A Biographical and Critical Sketch, with a Catalog of Their Portraits. Edinburgh: Walter Greenoak Patterson, 1894. . Further reading Alt URL External links Works in the National Galleries of Scotland James Tassie's daktyliotheca at the Cornell Collection of Antiquities: Cornell University: Gem Impressions Collection 1735 births 1799 deaths 18th-century engravers People from Pollokshaws Engraved gem artists Scottish jewellers 18th-century Scottish people Scottish engravers Scottish portrait painters