01.11.2022, 18:30 P.M.
Furnishing the Emerald Isle by James Peill co-author, with the late Knight of Glin, of Irish Furniture (Yale University Press, 2007) *Please note unfortunately this talk will not be in the City Assembly House but will be a LIVE VIRTUAL TALK.
Abstract: In his lecture, Furnishing the Emerald Isle, James Peill will look at some of the Irish furniture that was made for particular people or houses, livened up with a few portraits of the patrons. Many of these pieces are particularly helpful as they give us a benchmark for attributing other pieces and display uniquely Irish characteristics. James will talk about what makes eighteenth-century Irish furniture so unique and how to identify it.
James Peill F.S.A. has been the Curator of the Goodwood Collection since 2009. He was brought up in the Welsh Marches and read History of Art at Edinburgh University. He was formerly a Director of Christie’s where he was a specialist in the Furniture Department and an auctioneer. He is the co-author, with the late Knight of Glin, of Irish Furniture (Yale University Press, 2007) and The Irish Country House (Vendome, 2010) and the author of The English Country House (Vendome, 2013). His most recent book is Glorious Goodwood, a Biography of England’s Greatest Sporting Estate (Constable, 2019). He is churchwarden of Chanctonbury Parish, a Church of England parish in West Sussex, and is married with four daughters.
Image: The hall at Glin Castle, Co. Limerick, showing an Irish mahogany serving-table with the FitzMaurice arms, circa 1750, flanked by a pair of early nineteenth-century Irish hall chairs (photo: Dara McGrath).
This is the fourth talk in the Irish Georgian Society’s nine-week autumn lecture series, Georgian Homes: material culture of the domestic interior in 18th-century Ireland, which will explore the material culture of the Irish Georgian house, in both town and country, focusing on interior decoration, furniture and fine art. The talks will examine the manner in which these furnishings and decorations responded to the use of the interior spaces by their inhabitants; reveal the influences on their stylistic evolution; reflect on the province and economics of materials and manufacturing methods; and consider how the presentation of decorative finishes and objects in domestic settings acted as social signifiers of the inhabitants’ taste and status. The talks, which will examine the presentation and decoration of the homes of the elite and ‘middling’ sorts, will provide an overview of objects and collections that were designed and manufactured by native and foreign craftsmen and artisans, both in Ireland and abroad.
This lecture series forms an action of the Irish Georgian Society’s Conservation Education Programme, which is supported by the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage and The Heritage Council. The Irish Georgian Society wishes to acknowledge the sponsorship of Ecclesiastical Insurance.
For further architectural events in Ireland visit the Ireland Architecture Diary