<div class="description">
The skills involved in producing calotypes were not only of a technical nature. Hill’s sociability, humour and his capacity to gauge the sitters’ characters all played a crucial part in his photography. He is shown here on the right, apparently sharing a drink and a joke with James Ballantine and Dr George Bell. Bell, in the middle, was one of the commissioners of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_Law_(Scotland)_Act_1845" class="extiw" title="en:Poor Law (Scotland) Act 1845">Poor Law of 1845</a>, which reformed poor relief in Scotland, and author of <i>Day and night in the wynds of Edinburgh</i><a rel="nofollow" class="external autonumber" href="https://books.google.com/books?id=P5wHAAAAQAAJ">[2]</a>. Ballantine was a writer and stained-glass artist, and the son of an Edinburgh brewer. On the table we see a beer bottle and three 19th-century drinking glasses called “ale flutes”. One contemporary account describes a popular Edinburgh ale (Younger's) as "a potent fluid, which almost glued the lips of the drinker together, and of which few, therefore, could dispatch more than a bottle."<a rel="nofollow" class="external autonumber" href="https://books.google.com/books?id=cfaW7pkoPioC&amp;pg=PA55">[3]</a></div>
<bdi><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hill_%26_Adamson" class="extiw" title="en:Hill &amp; Adamson">Hill &amp; Adamson</a>
</bdi>
circa 1844 <div style="display: none;">date QS:P571,+1844-00-00T00:00:00Z/9,P1480,Q5727902</div>
<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/268524">metmuseum.org</a>