Making 1916: The stuff of history

When I was about 10 my father, who was involved in the restoration of Kilmainham Gaol, took me to visit the building, then neglected and forbidding. Having seen the cells of the 1916 leaders, we went to the stonebreakers’ yard, where they had been executed over a series of early mornings in May 1916.

I knew about all this, including James Connolly’s chair-bound death, but being in the place where it had happened had a tremendous effect. The high walls and desolate yard made these iconic executions even sadder and more heroic to me than they had been. I was experiencing the power of the material, the sympathetic magic that arises from being close to the physical fabric of something that matters.

This important book explores the material and visual culture around the Rising. Lisa Godson and Joanna Brück have assembled essays from 23 contributors to comment on a plethora of objects, clothes, photographs, paintings, documents and buildings that provide us with a new set of angles on the events that convulsed Ireland 100 years ago.

Material culture has much to offer as a conduit into the immediacy of the Rising itself and subsequent attempts to publicise and make heroes of its key players.

In their introduction the editors lay out their intentions: “A wealth of objects and images survive from the Rising – as well as from later events that commemorate it – in museums and archives, as part of the streetscape and in private ownership.

“These range from the informal to the formal, from buttons cut from the tunics of Volunteers to photographs of the ruined General Post Office and objects looted during Easter Week . . . The objects of the Rising are key to the construction of both personal and official histories.”

Moore Street

The book is organised in four sections.

The first, The Fabric of the Rising, includes contributions on the Tricolour, the rebels' uniforms, the Proclamation, the "Castle document" and coverage of the Rising in cinemas. There is a fascinating essay by the archaeologist Franc Myles on his "excavation" of the houses on Moore Street, which are now a State-owned national monument, from where the final rebel surrender was offered.

The imprint of the tunnels that the rebels made through the walls is still there, as are some pieces of contemporary furniture. The houses are a highly evocative environment, both in terms of their vital connection to 1916 and to the many lives lived in them before and since.

The second section, The Affective Bonds of the Rising, contains a terrific essay by Brian Crowley on Patrick Pearse's profile, outlining Pearse's tight control of his image and avoidance of full-face shots.

This practice was continued after his death by people like Oliver Sheppard and Séamus Murphy. Pearse’s was the only head (in profile, of course) to appear on a legal-tender Irish coin after Independence – a 10-shilling piece issued in 1966.

Crowley’s essay does full justice to Pearse’s insecurities and isolation as well as his capacity to transform himself into an icon: “His head is fixed, staring at a destiny only his prophetic soul can decipher.”

The third section, Revivalism and the Rising, begins with an absorbing essay by Elaine Sisson on The Ford of the Hurdles, a pageant devised by Micheál Mac Liammóir and Hilton Edwards for Dublin Civic Week in 1929. The pageant, commissioned by Dublin Corporation, represented the march of Irish history through many vicissitudes to the country's final awakening in 1916.

Many regular Gate actors were in the cast, with “fifty oversized civic guards, who were to be Gaels, Vikings, Normans and Volunteers.” History ends in 1916; no mention of the Civil War, still no doubt fresh in people’s minds.

Sisson beautifully describes the intention of the piece, “combing the snags of history into a smooth collective memory”. The pageant attracted huge audiences.

The final section, Remembering the Rising, begins with a really useful piece by Lar Joye and Brenda Malone of the National Museum of Ireland, which examines the history of the 1916 exhibitions at the museum from 1932 to 1991. The principles and culture underlying the State's collection of significant objects change over time; this is dramatically true of the museum's attitude towards the Rising.

Both the director George Noble Plunkett, or Count Plunkett, and one of the junior curators, Liam Gogan, were advanced nationalist sympathisers at the time of the Rising, and both were fired. After 1922 the cash-starved museum focused on its antiquities division, foregrounding its significant collections of early Irish material.

Two prominent personalities played their parts in the creation of a 1916 collection: Nellie Gifford-Donnelly and Adolf Mahr. Gifford-Donnelly was one of the famous Gifford sisters and had fought in 1916 in the Irish Citizen Army.

She effectively created the nucleus of the 1916 collection by assembling objects and documents that she asked to have displayed in the museum during the 1932 Eucharistic Congress.

Adolf Mahr, later known as Ireland’s most famous Nazi, was keeper of antiquities at the time, and, although not averse to the principle of a history museum, he was averse to what he referred to as patriotic relics. Gifford-Donnelly overcame his objections, the exhibition was installed, and it proved very popular with the public.

The Easter Week Collection was established in 1935, and members of the public began to donate material to it (rather than putting it up for auction for financial gain, as had been the recent practice).

Roger Casement’s trial

There are many other fresh and interesting pieces in the book, including Catherine Marshall’s essay on John Lavery’s huge painting of Roger Casement’s trial, a project that caused some consternation at the time. Finding a home for what was treated as a toxic object after its completion proved very difficult. It eventually came to rest in the King’s Inns in Dublin in 1951.

Pat Cooke contributes a characteristically reflective essay, informed by his long association with Kilmainham Gaol. Damien Shiels has a piece on the apparently publicly acceptable neglect of sites from the period, and Elizabeth Crooke examines the reticent record of Northern Ireland museums in relation to the Rising.

Nicholas Allen has an afterword that situates Ireland, particularly Dublin, as part of the trading network of a huge maritime empire, a position that allowed for fluidity in terms of travel and employment and variety in terms of consumer goods from all over the world. It was an empire on the verge of dissolution, not least as a result of Ireland’s struggle for independence.

The decade of centenaries has led to a State capital programme that addresses significant needs in the cultural infrastructure, including a new military archives building, the refurbishment of Kilmainham courthouse and Richmond Barracks, a new visitor centre in the GPO and the military-service-pensions archival project.

All of these are a recognition of the importance of material culture in our reflections on these events and will be a lasting legacy of the decade. This book is a valuable addition to those reflections.

Catriona Crowe is head of special projects at the National Archives of Ireland and chairwoman of the Irish Theatre Institute