Jessie M. King was an outstanding designer. She studied at Glasgow School of Art and became famous internationally as a book illustrator and a designer of jewellery and wallpaper. In 1902 she collaborated with Charles Rennie Mackintosh on the Scottish Pavilion at the Exposizione Nazionale in Turin, where she won a gold medal. At the outbreak of war she returned to Scotland and with her husband settled in Kirkcudbright, which by then was an artists' colony.