Panel discussion: Tuesday, April 5, 3:00-5:00pm, Burns Library Fine Print Room
The Arts and Crafts Movement that first emerged in England in the 1880s took on a distinctive character in Ireland, where its aesthetic and social ideals coalesced around the drive to forge a new national identity. Through association with William Morris and his daughter May, the Yeats family participated in the movement in England and then as it evolved in Ireland. Taking inspiration from Morris’s Kelmscott Press, the Yeats sisters were founders of the Dun Emer and later Cuala Press, both of which produced finely printed hand-bound books. Cuala Industries, the umbrella organization, also produced textiles and paintings. Other craft and industrial societies were established in Ireland under the movement’s aegis to promote needlework and lace-making, metalwork and stained glass, and other applied arts.
This Burns Library exhibition complements and runs concurrently with Boston College’s McMullen Museum spring exhibition, "The Arts and Crafts Movement: Making It Irish," which will feature a number of items from Burns Library collections, including several recent acquisitions. A complete catalogue may be ordered from the University of Chicago Press.
Please contact us for more information: burnsref@bc.edu / (617) 552-3282.