The Honan Chapel - Gallery Collection


Image TitleHonan Chapel: period photograph of the dossal
DescriptionThis photograph was published in Sir John Robert O´Connell´s guidebook to the chapel entitled The Honan Hostel Chapel Cork: Some Notes on the Building and the Ideas which Inspired It (Guy & Co., Cork, 1916). O´Connell clearly understood the power of photography to popularise the chapel and its collection. The Arts and Crafts Society of Ireland was founded in 1894 to foster artistic industries and, from 1896, it held regular exhibitions of clothes and other items of Irish manufacture. It was important in reviving the economy. Standards were greatly improved by the work of the Dun Emer Guild, founded in 1902 by Lily and Elizabeth Yeats and their English friend Evelyn Gleeson. The Guild was an important centre of Irish embroidery, printing, and bookbinding. Though the partnership between the Yeats’ sisters and Gleeson was brief, Dun Emer trained young women in many artistic skills, supplied churches with vestments and banners and contributed to the annual exhibitions. This photograph from O´Connell´s guide book to the Honan Chapel shows the original dossal. This hung behind the high altar and depicted the four Evangelist symbols in St. Matthew´s Gospel from the Book of Kells (Trinity College, Dublin) folio 27 verso.
ContributorDun Emer Guild, Hardwicke St., Dublin
Contribution Year1916
  
PhotographerGuy & Co. Photographic Studio, St. Patrick´s St., Cork
CopyrightCollege Archives, University College Cork
Date of Photograph1916
CollectionInterior