The volume catalogues some 50 of the finest pieces held by the Order, consisting largely of altar plate but also including sculpture, furniture and seal matrices. The catalogue is accompanied by a series of essays dealing with aspects of the material culture of the Irish Franciscans: church furnishings, objects of personal devotion, a unique collection of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century silver chalices, as well as contemporary secular silver in Ireland and English Catholic silver.
The volume will be of interest to historians, art historians and specialists in silver. It opens up a whole new perspective on the cultural heritage of Ireland in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, European influence on sacred art, patterns of patronage and the identification of regional silversmiths’ workshops in Ireland.

Contents:
Irish Franciscan church furnishings in the pre-Reformation period. R. Ó Floinn, Head of Collections at the National Museum of Ireland
Fabrics of faith: the material worlds of Catholic Ireland and Protestant Ireland, 1500–1800. Toby Barnard, Fellow and Tutor in History at Hartford College, University of Oxford
English Catholic silver in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Tessa Murdoch, Deputy Keeper of Sculpture, Metalwork, Ceramics and Glass at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Silver in Ireland 1600–1750. Michael Kenny, Keeper of the Art & Industrial Division, National Museum of Ireland
Personal devotional objects: Ireland and the influence of the Franciscans, 1500–1800. Jill Connaughton, Research Student in the History of Irish Art, TRIARC, Trinity College, Dublin
‘Me fieri fecit’: Franciscan chalices 1600–1650. Ma?gorzata Krasnod?bska-D’Aughton, Department of History, University College, Cork
Catalogue. M. Krasnod?bska-D’Aughton (with contributions from Mailan Doquang and Raghnall Ó Floinn)
The Albert Bender Collection of Asian Art

Between 1931 and 1936 Albert Bender donated approximately 260 artefacts of East Asian origin to the National Museum of Ireland (NMI) to be displayed in honour of his mother in the Augusta Bender Memorial Room of Far Eastern Art. The works, mostly of Chinese, Japanese and Tibetan Buddhist art, are one of the most significant gifts ever received by an Irish cultural institution and are of the highest importance within the NMI’s overall holdings of Asian material. The Bender collection is particularly renowned for its Tibetan Buddhist Thangkas (painted textiles depicting Buddhist scenes) and Japanese ukiyo-e (wood-block prints). The arrival of the collection in the NMI was a conspicuous and highly unusual episode in the history of collecting non-western material by Irish institutions. The purpose of this publication is to bring the collection, which was redisplayed at the National Museum of Ireland branch at Collins Barracks, Dublin, in 2008, to the widest possible audience. It documents the process of donation and catalogues and discusses the objects Bender gave; it explores the cultural and collecting backdrop in both Ireland and California against which Bender’s activities may be seen and assesses the cultural significance of his generosity in the context of Ireland in the post-Independence period.

Price: €35

208 pages hardback

Size: 300 x 220 mm

Published by Wordwell in association with the National Museum of Ireland