This major illustrated study investigates farmhouse and cabin furniture
from all over the island of Ireland. It discusses the origins and
evolution of useful objects, what materials were used and why, and how
furniture made for small spaces, often with renewable elements, was
innate and expected. Encompassing three centuries, it illuminates a way
of life that has almost vanished. It contributes as much to our
knowledge of Ireland's cultural history as to its history of furniture.
This is a is a substantially different book from Irish Country
Furniture, 1700-1950, published by Yale UP in 1993 and reprinted several
times. The new book now incorporates the findings of a lot of recent
research. Nearly all the black and white pictures in the 1993 book are
now in colour, or have been changed for the better, and now include
different examples (except archive pictures). Many of the author's
fieldwork photographs from the late 1980s, have been digitised and will
now be published for the first time. The extent has almost doubled;
there are an extra 120 illustrations; the main text has been fully
updated and revised; there is a new chapter 'Small Furnishings and
Utensils' and there is a new Preface by Louis Cullen. Reflecting the
considerable addition of new material, the time scale is also broadened
to include discussions of objects and interiors up to 2000. It
represents extraordinary value. The book looks at influences such as
traditional architecture, shortage of timber, why and how furniture was
painted, and the characteristics of designs made by a range of furniture
makers. The incorporation of natural materials such as bog oak, turf,
driftwood, straw, recycled tyres or packing cases is viewed in terms of
use, and durability. Chapters individually examine stools, chairs and
then settles in all their ingenious and multi-purpose forms. How
dressers were authentically arranged, with displays varying minutely
according to time and place, reveal how some had indoor coops to
encourage hens to lay through winter. Some people ate communally or
slept in outshot beds, in the coldest north-west, all this is
illustrated through art as well as surviving objects.
