A dose of passion at the Hunt museum

Voluntary museum guides bring an enthusiasm as well as specialist knowledge that injects fun into their tours, writes Brian O'Connell

'You'll have to excuse the verbal diarrhoea," says 83-year-old retired anaesthetist John McCormack. "Once we get started talking we can't stop." John's prop is an early Picasso, painted at a time when the artist was sketching for his supper at Els Quatro Gats restaurant in Barcelona. It's offset on the wall by two Jack B Yeats works, but McCormack's attention is drawn to a rather risqué Robert Fagan portrait.

"Many believe it to be his masterpiece," he says. "The lady in partial dress is his second wife, and so grieved was he with the death of his first wife, that he married this lady within six weeks!"

With just enough time for the aside to register, Sibylle McGovern takes over the reins and whisks us into the jewellery room of Limerick's Hunt Museum. A formidable and flamboyant presence, McGovern likes her bling to have a back-story. "The jewellery collection here is small but very valuable. My favourite piece is this cross, which belonged to Mary Queen of Scots, who wore it while she was imprisoned and gave it to her lady-in-waiting before she was executed. I also like this 'love-pair' pendant, which I went to Naples to research. It appears to date from the 16th century yet the surround and the ivory casing would appear a little later. I'm determined to get to the bottom of its exact origins though."

From there, 81-year-old Pat Humphreys challenges me to notice the similarities between decorative and plain pottery. "The thing is," says Humphreys, "they both date from roughly the same period, but someone discovered that if you put a white glaze on tin you could decorate it. Really people were trying to copy the porcelain Marco Polo had brought from China, but the Chinese wouldn't tell anyone how porcelain was made, and could you blame them?"

HALF AN HOUR in and I'm beginning to feel like a tour-guide's plaything. Thankfully we blaze a trail through the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages - nothing much to see there. Religion always throws up a few surprises and McCormack focuses my attention on a few dated shillings in a glass casing.

"May not look like much," he says, teeing me up, "but the collection's owner believed that was one of the 30 pieces of silver that Judas received for betraying Christ." Say again? I take a closer look. Inside a glass case is a 10 Dekadrachma coin from Syracuse, containing an image of a chariot on one side with the goddess of victory at the helm. It dates from the 4th century BC, with a gold surround added in the 15th century.

There's an inscription in Latin running along the rim of the coin, "Quia precium sanguinis est?" which translates as, "because it is the price of blood".

I'm having what might be termed a Da Vinci Codemoment. McCormack remains un-phased: "Dr Peter Harbison, well known archaeologist and member of the Royal Irish Academy who comes here, always says, 'well, it's a nice coin anyhow!'"

We zip through the rest of the collection, gaining insight on everything from William Leech to wallpaper, stained glass to Gauguin. It's colourful, informative and fun, and every week up to 50 tour guides like John, Pat and Sibylle give freely of their time at the Hunt Museum, as part of Ireland's only "docent" volunteer programme. The word docent derives from the Latin word ducere, meaning to lead, and is officially defined as a professor or university lecturer, but the term has been expanded to designate groups of volunteer guides who staff many of the museums and other educational institutions around the world.

Virginia Teehan, director of the Hunt Museum, estimates that the volunteers give upwards of 5,000 hours to the museum on an annual basis, worth well in excess of €100,000 in savings to the institution. The volunteer programme was set up by Teehan's predecessor Mairead Dunleavy, who based it on American models, where docents are a stable of many historic and literary institutions.

"Essentially it is a volunteer programme that operates to support the museum in all its functions," says Teehan. "We tend to select people who have an interest in the decorative arts or museums. They might have professional experience in their own life, be enthusiastic, lively and good communicators."

Since its inception 10 years ago, the museum says it has never had trouble getting people to give of their time, and receives about 40 applications each year from would-be docents. The volunteers are made up of people from varying social and demographic backgrounds, from students to working professionals. It allows for the wider community to both take ownership of, and impart knowledge about, the museum's collection. Some full-time members of the museum staff, including registrar Fiona Davern, started life in the museum as a docent, before moving to a paid job.

As well as giving tours of the museum's collection (every visitor can take up the offer of a free tour), the docents also do research in their chosen areas of interest, organise talks and seminars, and help in general housekeeping. They are also not afraid to express their views on how the museum should be run.

"Sometimes they are our best and most constructive critics," says Teehan. "I think also that having the docents provides a lively connection between the museum and the public. Visiting a museum can be an intimidating experience, and perhaps it's not in the overall scheme of what people want to do with their spare time. Having members who are interested in the collections and have knowledge, as tour guides, means that, for instance, groups of children can connect much more readily with the museum collection."

AS WELL AS inviting speakers into the museum, the docents themselves also give talks and present the findings of their research to their peers and the general public. "Speakers are invited to give talks on silver or ceramics or paintings, or we can even have speakers in about how to give a tour. Also, the docents themselves give talks. Pat Humphreys is a perfect example. She has selected a topic - stained glass - that she is interested in and has carried out extensive research. Really she just follows her own instincts and presents the findings of research to her colleagues and wider community."

A retired medical consultant, Pat Humphreys was born in the Curragh in 1925. After studying medicine in Dublin, she went to Manchester to specialise in anaesthesia, returning to south Tipperary as a consultant in 1956. She married an RAF pilot, who retired from service after inheriting a farm near Limerick, where they moved in the late 1950s. Humphreys retired in 1993, and four years later her husband, Chris, died from cancer. "About 10 years ago I was looking for something to do and had thought about taking up evening classes in English literature," she says. "There weren't any on in Limerick, so I saw an advertisement for a talk about the Hunt by then director Mairead Dunleavy. I went to it and I guess you could say I was hooked."

She has been coming back ever since. As well as the serious and invaluable work the docents engage in, they also value the strong social element to their associations. "The wonderful thing about this place is that after school or college, it is very hard to forge friendships again. In here everyone is on the same level. We are all interested in research and the finer things, and I would say all the 50 docents are friends. It is quite informal."

In keeping with the informality of the programme, Humphreys' current line of research was more a result of a chance reference than any academic insight.

"There is a trumpet in the collection made of ivory, and at the moment I'm reading a Wilbur Smith novel where it says that ivory trumpets were used as rallying calls for the army in the desert in Somalia, about 2,000 years ago. I'm going to write to Wilbur Smith and ask him where he found all that out."

For Sibylle McGovern, the surprising thing is not that she is part of the docent programme, but that she remains in Ireland at all. Originally from Germany, she and her American husband were en route to Panama, when they decided to stop off in Limerick where her father had opened a factory. They decided to stay for a bit and help get the operation off the ground. Forty years later, and Panama's loss is, as they say, Limerick's gain.

"For many years I was a housewife when our son was young. It was a time when people stayed at home really. I was interested in history and art and when he grew up, I started to do little bit of tour guiding. I used to travel around Ireland a lot and see all the old buildings and I got into Irish history. I saw the programme advertised here and thought it would be good in that I would learn a lot from the tours at the museum. I love the work now, the social aspect is very nice, and I can do tours and research my passion, which is jewellery. I've met a lot of very nice people."

For John McCormack, the docent programme redirected his retirement with a renewed sense of purpose. It also allows him to pursue his other passion in life, Irish silver. "I tend to come here every day, if only for a coffee and a gossip, but sometimes we do a bit of work as well! It's a very big group but we all gel very well and get along great with the staff. My passion is silver, and I am heavily involved in planning an exhibition that occurs next year. I've had a life-long interest in fine arts and antiques, but this gives me a way to further that interest. I love the work. Really, it keeps me alive."