It was the year in which novelist Emily Brontë and philosopher Karl Marx were born, and the year in which Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was published.
It was also the year that words and music were put together to create the Christmas carol Silent Night, and also marks the USA/UK treaty that created a Canadian border on the 49th parallel.
However, of much greater importance, it was also the year when stonemasons completed a luxurious farmhouse in east-central Scotland, with one of the masons inscribing the year into stone over what was a main doorway.
That farmhouse is now the Chippendale International School of Furniture which is estimated to contribute some £1 million to the local economy each year, and gives employment to nearly 20 skilled craftsmen and women.
That’s in addition to the dozens of students who come through our doors on introductory, intermediate or professional courses and who go on to build businesses of their own in different corners of the world.
When we started the school over 30 years ago, part of our vision was to bring new life to the old farmhouse and to create new jobs and new opportunities.
We’re delighted to have done that and to have taken a building designed for one purpose, and remade it for another purpose – bringing a new kind of prosperity to this part of Scotland, and exporting Scottish-taught skills worldwide.