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Eighteenth-century architect-builders were a small group, but important for understanding the market strategies of knowledge-based experts in an age of rapid growth in technical information before the creation of modern professions. This article confronts a teleological historiography of emerging professionalization. It is focused on Robert Mylne and several of his contemporaries in Edinburgh and London, including a number of successful London-based Scots who were active as architects, builders, engineers, and surveyors, and self-styled in all these areas when it suited them. It supplies an account of what it took for building experts to establish themselves and flourish in big cities and the ways in which such experts navigated, controlled, and accommodated an environment of unregulated expertise that largely suited contemporary practitioners. Individual, family, and collective market strategies are examined in detail and the final section is a close analysis of the activities of the Architects Club in the 1790s. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on Sir David Cunningham of Robertland, who was appointed by Scottish King James VI as master of works in Scotland. James appointed him Surveyor of the Works in England. The article explores why Cunningham is important to architectural history, who he was, and why was he appointed twice to the highest architectural position by James. Article topics include the lack of architectural documentation in Scotland between 1599 and 1611, elite architecture in Scotland, and a description of Newark Castle.