Commemorative Volumes
Numerous volumes were published in this period in commemoration of individuals, groups and events. Most of those volumes were extensively illustrated and were sometimes lavish productions.
Daniel Maclise’s portrait drawings of Irish and British literary and other celebrities of the 1830s had lasting appeal and were gathered and reprinted several times. The nationalist politican, Daniel O’Connell, was celebrated in 1875 with the publication of the substantial O’Connell Centenary Record. In 1924 Harry Clarke illustrated an ephemeral if visually striking account of the origins of Jameson’s whiskey and the reasons for its current scarcity. At about the same time Clarke designed the page borders for Ireland’s Memorial Records, a solemn listing in eight large volumes of the Irish dead of the First World War. In 1932 the Irish Free State Official Handbook commemorated the achievement of independence and set an agenda for modern Ireland, visually enhanced by illustrations commissioned from the leading artists of the day.
O’Connell Centenary Committee O’Connell centenary record, 1875
Illustrated by John O’Hea and others
Dublin, 1878
Gall.R.13.23
The O’Connell centenary record is a luxury bound illustrated volume and was produced to serve as a record of the events organised to mark the centenary of the birth of Daniel O’Connell. This elaborate decorated title page is a fanciful image, in which O’Connell, surrounded by Irish motifs, beckons towards an angelic figure bearing a banner emblazoned ‘Emancipation’, referring to O’Connell’s role in securing the Roman Catholic Emancipation Act in 1829. It was designed by John O’Hea, whose monogram it bears. O’Hea was an Irish political cartoonist who sometimes published under the pseudonym Spex. The design was hand-engraved on wood by Charles Malcolm Grey.
O’Connell Centenary Committee O’Connell centenary record, 1875
Illustrated by John O’Hea and others
Dublin, 1878
Gall.R.13.23
This is a reproductive wood engraving by Charles Malcolm Grey after a painting of Daniel O' Connell by Joseph Patrick Haverty (1794 - 1864), who was a noted marine, portrait, genre and miniature painter. This full length portrait of O'Connell is set in an Irish landscape and he is accompanied by an archetypal Irish wolfhound, whose collar bears the name '[...] Haverty'.
O’Connell Centenary Committee O’Connell centenary record, 1875
Illustrated by John O’Hea and others
Dublin, 1878
Gall.R.13.23
The title page bears an image of Darrynane, known today as Derrynane House, the ancestral home of Daniel O’Connell in County Kerry. The image was wood-engraved by hand by Charles Malcolm Grey.
Committee of the Irish National War Memorial Ireland’s memorial records 1914-1918: being the names of Irishmen who fell in the great European war
Illustrated by Harry Clarke
Dublin, 1923
Gall.O.Window seat
This page is taken from Ireland’s memorial records , a Roll of Honour naming more than 49,000 Irishmen killed in the First World War. The page is framed with one of seven decorative borders designed by Harry Clarke. Throughout the book, the borders combine silhouetted, yet realistic, front-line images of battle with allegorical figures and symbolic objects of Irish and British relevance, and combine Art Deco design with styles inspired by Irish revivalism, including interlaced elements. Clarke’s designs were not cut by hand but produced using photoengraving processes.