This perky but eroded owl is one of a pair at No. 20 Brandon Street, formerly the plant floor of Edinburgh printers R.& R. Clark.
The company was established in 1846 by Robert Clark, with financial help from his cousin Richard.
It flourished in the 1850s and 1860s once Robert had made sound professional contacts in London, particularly with the publisher Macmillan, and did even better when he took over printing of Sir Walter Scott's novels from the firm of his uncle Adam Black.
Expansion required larger premises, and the company moved into Brandon Street in 1883 (which date can be made out on cipher panels on either wing of the building).
The architect, York Place-based John Chesser, is perhaps best known as the designer of many Heriot Hospital schools, but was also responsible for the two-storey houses bending around from opposite Drummond CHS on Bellevue Place and along into the south-east end of East Claremont Street.
Gifford et al. in Edinburgh: The Buildings of Scotland (1983) describe the structure as 'Jacobean' in style, and make reference to its gables, bays and bows.
Printing continued on this site until the mid-1970s, and some photos of the interior can be found here, as well as interesting accounts of the male staff's holiday drinking habits.
R. & R. Clark was the first printing firm in Great Britain to employ a female compositor, in the 1860s. This practice became more commonplace after the 1870s, following Clark's employment of women to break a strike by male employees.
By the 1890s, R. & R. Clark employed between 500 and 600 people, and some idea of the scale of the operation behind the elegant façade can be gathered from the aerial photograph here, taken in 1949.
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