Visualizing the Celtic Revival

the Arts and Crafts movement in Ireland – selected writings by Nicola Gordon Bowe

Roisín Kennedy

• Publisher: Four Courts Press
• Year: 2024
• eBook ISBN:
  9781801511858
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: History of Art

This volume brings together Nicola Gordon Bowe' s most important writings on the Arts and Crafts movement in Ireland, including insightful essays on its cultural and art historical background and contexts, the leading patrons and artists of the movement, as well as key studies of the metalwork, textiles, stained glass, furniture and book design associated with this dramatic flourishing of art and design production in Ireland between 1894 and 1925. Bowe' s ability to scrutinize the decorative arts visually, physically and aesthetically is matched by her awareness of the rich intellectual and cultural contexts that gave rise to its production. Her insights into this significant period in Irish cultural history provide the reader with a nuanced understanding of the diverse motivations and achievements of the craftworkers and artists who produced these objects, as well as the roles played by the networks of patrons, critics and supporters that enabled the movement to thrive. Bowe' s research places the Arts and Crafts movement firmly within the contexts of the Cultural Revival.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. A contextual introduction to romantic nationalismand vernacular expression in the Irish Arts and Crafts movement, c.1886–1925
• 2. ‘Dreams long hoarded’: aspects of cultural identity leading to the Arts and Crafts movement in Ireland, c.1886–1925
• 3. Preserving the relics of Heroic time: visualizing the Celtic Revival in early twentieth-century Ireland
• 4. The Arts and Crafts movement in Ireland
• 5. The Arts and Crafts movement in Dublin
• 6. Lord Dunsany, 1878–1957: portrait of a collector
• 7. ‘The wild heath has broken out again in the heatherfield’: philanthropic endeavour and Arts and Crafts achievement in early twentieth-century Kilkenny
• 8. Percy Oswald Reeves (1870–1967), metalworker and enamellist, forgotten master of the Irish Arts and Crafts movement
• 9. Two early twentieth-century Irish Arts and Crafts workshops in context: An Túr Gloine and the Dun Emer Guild and Industries
• 10. Arts and Crafts textiles in Ireland: two sets of embroidered banners in Co. Galway, designed and made by Lily Yeats at the Dun Emer Guild for Loughrea (1902–4) and by Wilhelmina and Ethel Geddes for Duniry (1918–19)
• 11. Early twentieth-century Irish stained glass in context
• 12. A new Byzantium: the stained glass windows in the Honan Chapel by Harry Clarke
• 13. Furniture and the Arts and Crafts movement in Ireland, 1894–1935
• 14. A Cotswold-inspired venture towards modernism in Ireland: Edward Richards Orpen (1884–1967) and the Grange Furniture Industry, 1927–32
• 15. The book in the Irish Arts and Crafts movement
• 16. ‘A certain Irish lover of well-bound books’: Sir Edward Sullivan, Bart., 1852–19281
• Select list of publications by Nicola Gordon Bowe
• Acknowledgments
• Index