The Department of History is pleased to announce the publication of Studies in Irish Silver (Four Courts Press, Dublin) edited by our colleague Dr Alison FitzGerald. This volume, with new research by established and emerging scholars from Ireland and the UK, arises from a symposium organised as a collaboration between the Irish Georgian Society, the History Department at Maynooth University and the National Museum of Ireland, generously funded by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.
The book includes chapters by current and recent postgraduates of the Department (Damian Collins, Jessica Cunningham and Breda Scott). It examines the circumstances in which silver objects were made, sold, valued and dispersed in Georgian Ireland and considers specialized branches of the trade including the production of freedom boxes and jewellery, the sourcing of metals and materials, the value of inventories as evidence and regional patterns and preferences.
| Chapter 1 | Silver: mined and in mind | Toby Barnard |
| Chapter 2 | The production and supply of gold and silver boxes in late Stuart and Georgian Dublin |
Damian Collins |
| Chapter 3 | Elite gift exchange: a royal christening gift for Lady Emily Lennox in the Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Collection and christening gifts in the V&A Collections | Tessa Murdoch |
| Chapter 4 | The dukes of Ormondes’ silver inventories, 1674–1715 |
Thomas Sinsteden |
| Chapter 5 | ‘Taken or destroy’d’: the silver at Castlecomer House and the Irish Rebellion of 1798 |
Jessica Cunningham |
| Chapter 6 | Jewellery in Georgian Dublin, 1770 to 1830 | Breda Scott |
| Chapter 7 | Jewellery in eighteenth-century Ireland: from the staple to the sublime to the sentimental |
Zara Power |
| Chapter 8 | Irish provincial silver in the Georgian period | John R. Bowen |
| Chapter 9 | Plate, plated wares, plotting and proposals: Matthew Boulton’s Irish correspondence | Alison FitzGerald |