Demijohn's Big Spring Weekend

Demijohn’s Big Spring Weekend at Glenlair Steading is a celebration of fine art and sculpture, as part of the Spring Fling Open Studios Event, and the very best of local food and drink.

This unique May Bank Holiday event is free to visit and will run daily between 10am to 5.30pm from Sat 25th to Mon 27th May, with a special late evening opening until 8pm on Saturday 25th May.

Recently restored and architecturally significant, Glenlair Steading is the home of Demijohn, Scotland’s award winning liquid deli. It is also famous for having been the home of Scottish Physicist James Clerk Maxwell.

As a new venue for the 2024 Spring Fling Open Studio event, Glenlair Steading is a convenient stop off point for art and food enthusiasts travelling between the creative villages of Kirkpatrick Durham and Corsock.

Visitors will be able to enjoy unique works of art exhibited by both Sally Jennings, a Glasgow based painter, print maker and installation artist and Marilyn Crawford, an award winning Dumfriesshire based sculptor and artist.

Sally Jennings will be demonstrating her methods of painting, drawing and printmaking over the weekend.

In addition Demijohn’s new store within Glenlair Steading will be open daily from 10am to 5.30pm daily for free tastings of their unique range of handmade, sustainable food and drink.

For hungry visitors, delicious tapas-style street food by local Chef Peter Wilson-Walker of Caterbirds along with Demijohn Cocktails and Mocktails will be available to purchase.

Demijohn opened at Glenlair Steading in August 2023, near Scotland’s food town of Castle Douglas. Selling mostly British-made quirky food and drink products, Demijohn has brought its original and distinctive ecofriendly method of retail to a beautiful and special part of rural South West Scotland to operate as both a visitor attraction and 21st century mail order hub for the first time.

Within the beautiful and architecturally significant 1840 farm steading conversion, Demijohn operates like an old fashioned grocer or Italian cantina, bottling customers' orders into beautiful shaped, refillable glass bottles on demand.

Customers can visit the new attraction to collect orders placed online, refill their empty Demijohn bottles or enjoy a pre-arranged Event to taste some of their delicious products first hand.

Their extensive range includes a port like, locally produced Bramble Scotch Whisky from Moffat and a unique Elderflower Vinegar dressing which has been made using flowers picked on the farm at Glenlair.

Angus Ferguson, Owner of Demijohn said: “We were honoured that the committee of Spring Fling chose Demijohn as a new venue this year, as we are the newest visitor attraction in Galloway and this is our first major event since opening last year. Both Sally and Marilyn’s art is hugely inspiring so we can only hope the beautiful, historic setting of Glenlair Steading will do their work justice.”

All products are available to order online for collection or mail order delivery via the Demijohn website: https://www.demijohn.co.uk/

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Note to Editors:

Glenlair Steading is listed as Venue 59 on the Pink Route in the Spring Fling Open Studios brochure.

Sally Jennings is a Glasgow-based painter, printmaker and installation artist. She graduated from Glasgow School of Art in Fine Art in 2022. Her practice spans oil painting, printmaking, and installation work, with a central focus on the fluidity of the world around us. Recently Sally’s work has been influenced by artefacts of ancient belief systems and esoteric practices found along the Scottish coastlines, many of which are shrouded in mystery and myth. The natural world also provides much inspiration, particularly in phenomenal patterns and repeating forms created by waves on sand, erosion of stone and cliffs from the elements, and divine compositions of plants and fauna.

Sally has also been reading and exploring concepts from contemporary physics, applying theories around place, objecthood and observation to the found imagery from Scottish artefacts and landscapes to explore how the context of these images and objects evolve.

Marilyn Crawford is a graduate of Glasgow School of Art. Marilyn’s exhibition of sculpture includes a varied selection from ‘Bird feeder,’ done many years ago, which won an award at the Royal Scottish Academy Exhibition back then, and the first of Mary’s two heads, to work produced over the years in clay, wood, and plaster of paris, mostly cast in bronze now. Increasingly Marilyn has wanted to give an impression of the air around or adjacent to the shapes, as well as the shapes of the “sculpture” itself, and this has led to ‘Island’ and other ideas similar to it.

More details on Spring Fling Open Studios is available via the online brochure: https://www.spring-fling.co.uk/studio/sally-jennings/

Demijohn:

Demijohn was founded in Edinburgh in 2004 by Angus and Frances Ferguson and is now based at Glenlair Steading on their family farm in South West Scotland. They source unusual, delicious artisan liqueurs, spirits, oils and vinegars from around the UK and Europe and sell them in a wide range of refillable glass bottles via their international mail order service and farm shop concession stores. Each bottle can have a free handwritten personalised message added. Gift wrapping is also available.