Traditional crafts of Ireland (review)

The article presents an overview of the archaeological and documentary evidence for medieval pottery production in Ireland and places it within the context of similar studies in Britain. The study period is defined by the arrival of the Anglo Norman settlers in Ireland in the late 12th-century, which marked the beginning of medieval pottery production in Ireland on a large scale and concludes with its demise during the 15th-century. Although the Anglo Norman settlers in Ireland lived in the western limits of the Anglo Norman world, their continued involvement with it politically, economically and culturally, an on-going connection is borne out by their material culture and pottery production tradition in particular. This paper is intended as an overview of the research themes and findings discussed in greater detail in my PhD thesis (Curtin 2012). Article published in Medieval Ceramics 34 - Journal of the Medieval Pottery Research Group 2013, pages 27-37.

New Hibernia Review, 2010

2006

Journal of Irish Archaeology, Volume XXVIII 2019, pp 139-159, 2019

This paper discusses the archaeological evidence for medieval pottery production in Ireland within a theoretical framework that allows investigation of the topic in the context of contemporary local, national and European events. This paper employs the word ‘colonist’ to describe the Anglo-Normans who came to Ireland from the late twelfth century in terms of the social and political aspects of their conquest and their imposition of Anglo-Norman power in Ireland, but without the connotations of social and religious reform associated with seventeenth-century colonialism in Ireland. It examines the experience of the Anglo-Norman colonists who came to Ireland in the late twelfth century and the settlers of the thirteenth–fifteenth centuries through their material culture. It proposes that the settlers’ desire for wheel-thrown pottery similar in style and form to contemporary pottery from England in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries represents a deliberate statement of identity and ethnicity that aligned them with Anglo-Norman material culture and technology.

Oxford Handbook of Cultural Evolution, 2023

Craft traditions are some of the most durable of human institutions, preserving and transmitting knowledge and skills related to material culture. Their study has relevance to a range of disciplines, including archaeology, art history, and the history of technology. From an evolutionary perspective they offer the opportunity to study culture at a range of scales, from the behaviours of individual craftspeople to broad-scale patterns of culture, and they are an important testing ground for theoretical models of how culture evolves.

Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Europe, 2001

/ can say that Ireland is hooey, Ireland is a gallery of fake tapestries, But I cannot deny my past to which my self is wed. The woven figure cannot undo its thread. Louis MacNeice (1986) Situated in an outside corner of what looked like a small school playground, a turf fire blazed beneath a large pot-like tub, filled to overflowing with water, a dyeing medium, and large clumps of wool. A young man, a weaver, but not by trade, stirred the mixture occasionally, adding more turf when necessary, removing the product when the color was deemed "deep" enough. A bag of rotting onionskins rested on the ground nearby. Heather and lichen lay in makeshift piles on stone walls behind and around him. As the wool was removed from the dyeing vat, dripping and riddled with the "realness" of the dyeing medium, bits of lichen, heather, and onion-skin clung unattractively. The day, though sunny, was cold, and the breeze from the Atlantic sharp. Some students, at first humored by the roaring turf fire and the scads of wool waiting to be dipped, hugged their clothing tightly, and shied away from the unkemptness of the scene. Most were workshop participants in Irish tapestry creation, and many soon returned to the classroom's warmth and comfort. Others, willing to brave the vagaries of Irish weather awhile longer, continued to observe, ask questions. One noted that the dyed and scattered wool stood in sharp contrast to what she had been presented with at the start of the course: dry, clean, fluffy, ready to be carded, spun, and woven. An intermittent attraction and repulsion reverberated around the circle, creating distance for those who had come to purchase the experience. One of the participants voiced these sentiments aloud. Turning to the weaver, she said, "You do this sort of thing? Gross." This paper teases out the tensions associated with the ideology of cultural revival in a remote Gaeltacht, or Irish-speaking region, in southwest Donegal, Ireland. There, the "west" is equated with "the real Ireland" (Brett 1996; Kockel 1995), and "culture tourists" from abroad, as well as from the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland, travel to take instruction in Ireland's purported "heritage": its language in particular, and its renowned weaving traditions. 2 As postmodern energies gain sway in the age of "the Celtic Tiger," 3 the commoditizing of material culture and the discourse of who the Irish "have always been" are seen in the context of attempts to re-appropriate a new sense of self. It is argued here that ideological reconstitution demands multiple reconfigurations of persons and objects, and a close look at the revitalization of the weaving trade reveals unexpected consequences. Moreover, the concept of

2006

IPMAG in conjunction with the Group for the Study of Irish Historic Settlement is hosting a conference that will serve to highlight the significant role that settlement and materiality has played in the transformation of Irish society. Material culture in the form of artefacts, architecture, and grave memorials, as well as documentary sources such as maps, inventories and treatises can provide a perceptive commentary on the lives of people who lived in a society that was Irish Post-Medieval Archaeology Group

Making Histories. Proceedings of the Sixth International Insular Art Conference, pp 162-73, 2013

Objects such as the Ardagh Chalice, the Derrynaflan Paten, the Shrine of St Patrick's Bell and the Cross of Cong are celebrated today for their artistic beauty, as well as the technical skills they display. They demonstrate that early medieval Irish society was a culturally rich and sophisticated one. However, in the modern scholarly literature on these objects the craftsmen responsible for these marvels of early medieval Ireland are generally excluded from the discussion. Indeed, early medieval metalwork is often written about in an abstract way, without any discussion of the people who were responsible for an object's creation and use. This paper concentrates on a single category of person involved in the creation of these treasures, the craftsmen, by examining their identity and status in early medieval Irish society.

Medieval Ulster Coarse Pottery is hand-built, unglazed pottery, made in Ulster and the immediate surrounding Medieval Ulster Coarse Pottery has been recognised by archaeologists-using various names, such as Crannog Ware and Everted Rim Ware-for more than a century. Despite this long history of study, little was known about this ceramic tradition, in part because, although there had been excavation-specific examinations of vessels and some attempt to examine the fabrics of wider groups of this material, there had been no attempt to look at the basics of form, size, shape and decoration on a wide geographic and temporal scale. This paper tries to address these deficiencies by examining the later medieval coarse pottery of Ulster as a whole, focusing on form and decoration of the vessels and developing a firm chronological and typological framework for future work.