C103
Article
Irish
Material Culture:
The Shape of the Field
How can a study of material
culture help us understand present and past? Paul Caffrey
looks at the evidence closest to home.
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£100
banknote, designed c. 1927, incorporating Sir John
Lavery's portrait
of Lady Lavery as Cathleen Ní Houlihan, the
personification of Ireland;
courtesy the author
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The objects comprising our material
culture are important, not just for their function, their
decorative value or their relationship to other objects.
They also serve as powerful symbols of the age in which
they were created. Furthermore, they may be viewed with
temporal disjunction. An object may be a symbol of the
age of its creation, but by the mysterious process of
time it may serve as a key to our understanding of that
age, and therefore, indirectly, a symbol of our own understanding.1
Thus material objects are important for what they
are and for what they represent; they are the physical
embodiment of both the culture and the values of the time
when they were produced and consumed.
Irish culture has been viewed
as pre-eminently literary, verbal and musical.2
Though visual aspects of Irish culture are
important and have contributed to it, the study of visual
and material history has been relegated to a subordinate
place in Irish studies.3
Everyday objects and products produced or consumed by
Irish people in the past have just as much significance
as those of other more materially conscious countries.
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Whiskey
Bottle Label c. 1950, John Locke & Co. Ltd,
Kilbeggan,
Co. Westmeath, founded 1757; courtesy the author
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For example, a twentieth-century
shortlist of material objects that are associated with
Ireland would include Guinness (packaging and advertising),
whiskey, the harp as a national symbol, Waterford glass,
Kerrygold, Belleek china, the Cladagh ring, Irish linen,
Irish lace, tweed, handcrafted ceramics, the Aran jersey,
the Aer Lingus corporate identity, Ballygowan and Riverdance.
Common to all is the implicit, peculiarly Irish tradition
of design, created either by advertising and marketing
agencies, or by the use of traditional materials and vernacular
designs with a continuous history. Each of these, either
alone or in conjunction with others, conjure up a nostalgic,
romantic vision of an Ireland as she might have been in
the past. This imagined country is one where the national
colour, green, abounds, which evokes a particular political
and historical milieu in which the use of natural materials,
traditional skills and crafts, and kinds of decoration,
inform a particular continuum of rural life.
However, this is only a small
part of the picture. The list does not include all the
objects produced and consumed in Ireland. It excludes
the significant imported products such as cars, technology,
television programmes, magazines, newspapers and clothing
that form part of the material culture.
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Victorian
wall mounted postbox with the
letters VR ('Victoria Regina') and imperial
crown. One of the first design decisions
of the government of the Irish Free
State was to paint all postboxes green.
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Material culture is more than
the study of man-made objects but transcends traditional
disciplines and cultural boundaries. It is a multi-disciplinary
examination of the relationship between artefacts and
the social aspects of objects. Material culture is an
umbrella term for a discipline that draws heavily on subjects
such as anthropology, archaeology, art and design history,
the decorative arts, history, cultural geography, museology,
ethnography, sociology, technology, architecture, folklore
and folk-life. It is in many ways related to all of these
disciplines and is the area in between these subjects.
The multi-disciplinary nature of material culture and
the diversity of perspectives it evokes are a source of
energy which drives the subject forward to tackle new
areas and gain new insights.
Questions that material culture
raise relate to the analysis of the object. For instance,
how has the study of material objects altered our perception
of Irish culture and history?4
What does this tell us that is new?5
In a predominantly oral, verbal and musical culture, the
many were nonliterate. The often scant material objects
can produce new insights into the lives of those who produced
and consumed them, and the way we view the past age in
which such producers and consumers lived. Where there
is a lack of documentary evidence, especially among traditionally
subordinate groups such as women, homosexuals, travellers,
the rural poor, the urban working class, objects are the
most truthful and revealing records of such people's lives.
In testing received ideas, material culture is concerned
with issues of race, gender, class, religion, age and
ethnicity. It is about describing the whole, the symbolic
nature of objects, rituals, myths and an appreciation
of the context within which objects are made and used.
Although not unique to Ireland, the importance of religion
in defining material culture is peculiarly significant.
Lisa Godson's research into the material culture of Catholicism
and religious spectacle in Ireland provides us with new
and important insights into the definition and expression
of communal identity.6
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Green
and white enamel road sign in Irish and Roman type;
courtesy the author
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Material culture has its origins
in anthropology in the nineteenth-century, when ethnographers
expressed and mediated human and social relationships
in the study of ethnic groups. Related to this are the
twin subjects of folklife and folklore with their focus
on oral tradition and the lives of the poor.7
The interest in the nonindustrial crafts, artisan products
and design emphasize the importance of everyday things
and the objects of daily life in the study of material
culture. Claudia Kinmonth's research on Irish vernacular
furniture is a pioneering work on the objects of Irish
rural material culture.8
Allied to this the study of social
history, the recording of ordinary people's stories and
experiences of material objects such as clothing has produced
new insights. Recent research in dress history on clothing
sent back to Ireland by emigrants in the USA has uncovered
a hitherto unrecorded aspect of Irish history.9
The study of consumption, joined
to the analysis of production, is central to material
culture and understanding the development of capitalism
in Western culture. The economic development of Ireland
is exceptional, and how this is reflected in the material
culture is significant in producing an interesting intersection
of cultural theory and the world of things.10
The impact of technology, for
example the new computer technology and its all pervasive
impact on culture, the domestic household, work, women's
lives, are all areas to be explored.
An important aspect of material
culture comes from the study of the visual, art and design
history, and the study of the decorative arts. Historians
of design and the decorative arts have applied themselves
to studying utilitarian objects. The skills required to
identify and evaluate through the visual study of objects
has its origins in art history. There is a tendency for
writers on material culture to dismiss connoisseurship
and aesthetic discrimination, yet people of all cultures
make aesthetic judgements. Material culture has not developed
a theory of aesthetics to explain why people prefer some
objects over others and why they find certain things more
attractive or visually pleasing. Material culture is at
the confluence of these streams of anthropology, social
and design history. Material culture is not just the product
of culture or a reflection of a people, it is embedded
in culture as the product of human endeavour.
Dr Paul Caffrey lectures
in the history of art and design; he coordinates the design
history courses at the National College of Art and Design.
1 2 3456
7810
