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Cuala Press Prints digitised and available online as part of Virtual Trinity Library.  

The Library of Trinity College, Dublin is delighted to announce that as part of an ongoing Virtual Trinity Library project, over one hundred images of Cuala Press prints are now available to view online on Trinity College Dublin’s Digital Collections platform.

The collection of one hundred and eleven hand-coloured Cuala Press Prints (TCD MS 11574) was donated to the Manuscripts and Archives Research Collection in Trinity College Dublin by Vin Ryan of the Schooner Foundation in 2017. The donor amassed the collection in the mid-20th century and has philanthropically funded the Virtual Trinity Library project to make the Cuala Press collections available, including The Cuala Press Business Archives (TCD MS 11535).  

The digitisation of the Cuala Press prints forms part of the wider Cuala Press Project which involves the cataloguing, conservation, and digitisation of the Cuala Press archive as part of the Virtual Trinity Library project under the theme of Ireland’s Creative Legacy. The aim of Virtual Trinity Library is to is to catalogue, conserve, digitise and research these unique collections of national importance making them accessible to a global audience, from schoolchildren to scholars. 

Both collections were catalogued by Project Archivist Ciara Daly between October 2020-October 2021 and are undergoing ongoing conservation work by Project Conservator Adam Macklin and digitisation by Digital Photographer, Noel Shelley. A Post-Doctoral Researcher has also been appointed on the Project and Dr Billy Shortall (Ryan Gallagher Kennedy Research Fellow at the Irish Art Research Centre (TRIARC) at the School of Histories and Humanities at TCD) has begun research using the newly catalogued collections. You can read more in his RTÉ Brainstorm piece entitled “How Cuala Press created a sense of Irish national identity.”

You can view the catalogues for the Cuala Press Print Collection here and The Cuala Press Business Archive here

You can read more about the project here.