Making 1916

Material and Visual Culture of the Easter Rising

Edited by Lisa Godson and Joanna Brück

£25.00

The 1916 Rising is the pivotal yet highly contested moment in Irish history when militant republicans sought to seize political power from Britain, and declared - though unsuccessfully in the short term – an independent state. Credited with inspiring independence movements in other former colonies, the Rising has been the subject of histories from the political to the literary. Yet, the rich variety of objects and images associated with the Rising – from buttons and medals to souvenir postcards – have not formed a focus of academic research. This volume of essays will examine the material and visual culture of the Rising to consider how these illuminate changing ways of engaging with and understanding this iconic event. Family keepsakes such as autograph books from Frongoch internment camp, informal souvenirs such as pieces of rubble from Dublin’s General Post Office, and ‘official’ souvenirs such as photo booklets each played a significant role in the construction of individual and collective memory. In placing material and visual culture centre stage, this book will examine how the spaces, objects and images associated with the Rising are caught up in processes of identity production in both public and private space as changing socio-political conditions generated new understandings of 1916 and its aftermath. It addresses the ‘things’ of 1916 not as mere illustrations of history, but as having agency and effect on material practices central to contested concepts of identity and the creation of social memory.

Joanna Brück is Reader in the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Bristol.

Lisa Godson is Lecturer at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin.

Introduction Joanna Brück and Lisa Godson Approaching the material and visual culture of the 1916 Rising

Section 1: The Fabric of the Rising

Brian Hand The fabric of a deathless dream: a short introduction to the origins and meanings of the 1916 tricolour flag

Jane Tynan The unmilitary appearance of the 1916 Rebels

Franc Myles Beating the retreat: the final hours of the Easter Rising

Daniel Jewesbury The constitution of a state yet to come: the unbroken promise of the Half-Proclamation

Bill Mc Cormack What is a forgery or a catalyst? The so-called ‘Castle Document’ of Holy Week 1916

Ciara Chambers The ‘aftermath’ of the Rising in cinema newsreels

Section 2: The Affective Bonds of the Rising

Orla Fitzpatrick Portraits and propaganda: photographs of the widows and children of the 1916 leaders in The Catholic Bulletin

Jack Elliott ‘After I am hanged my portrait will be interesting but not before’. Ephemera and the construction of personal responses to the Easter Rising

Joanna Brück Nationalism, gender and memory: internment camp craftwork, 1916-1923

Laura McAtackney Female prison autograph books: (re)remembering the Easter Rising through the experiences of Irish Civil War imprisonment

Brian Crowley Pearse’s profile: the making of an icon

Section 3: Revivalism and the Rising

Elaine Sisson – Dublin Civic Week and the materialisation of history

Mary Ann Bolger Redesigning the Rising: typographic commemorations of 1916

Róisín Kennedy The Capuchin Annual: visual art and the legacy of 1916, one generation on

Hilary O’Kelly National Revival dress and 1916

Section 4: Remembering the Rising

Lar Joye and Brenda Malone Displaying the nation: the 1916 exhibition at the National Museum of Ireland (1932-1991)

Elizabeth Crooke A story of absence and recovery: the Easter Rising in museums in Northern Ireland

Pat Cooke History, materiality and the myth of 1916

Damian Shiels Place versus memory: forgetting Ireland’s sites of independence?

Catherine Marshall ‘Of all the trials not to paint…’. Sir John Lavery’s painting High Treason, Court of Criminal Appeal: the Trial of Roger Casement 1916

Justin Carville ‘Dusty fingers of time’: photography, materials memory and 1916

Lisa Godson Religion, ritual and the performance of memory in the Irish Free State

Afterword Nicholas Allen Lost city of the archipelago: Dublin at the end of Empire

A short review cannot do justice to the variety of topics in and quality of contributors to Making 1916. The decision to have short case studies gives the volume a lively

energy and it bursts with ideas and insights...it is a real achievement to have created a book of essays of such substance and originality.

Australasian Journal of Irish Studies

This is an insightful and well-edited anthology, which offers material and ideas not available elsewhere.
Oxford Journals

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.
Catriona Crowe The Irish Times

Format: Hardback

Size: 239 x 163 mm

320 Pages

ISBN: 9781781381229

Publication: September 14, 2015