Vessels of Honor and Dishonor: The Symbolic Character of Irish Earthenware

The symbols of Ireland are today well known and widely recognized. The harp and the shamrock, and to a lesser extent, the wolfhound and the round tower, have symbolized Irish nationality for generations.1 Among other visual sym bols, some of the most renowned include imaginative images of Mother Ireland, Hibernia, and Erin.2 These metonymical symbols help men and women to envision the wider meanings of the images, and may evoke complex emotions, many of which may be deep-seated and even unrecognized by the individuals experiencing them. In addition to Ireland's most prominent sym bols, visual artists and, perhaps, craftspeople created and used symbols that were so subtle that they are today largely unrecognized. Recent research, con structed around archaeological findings, suggests that common course earth enware vessels may have functioned in this manner. Artists in the early nine teenth century may have used coarse earthenware vessels as a way to evoke sym bolically the image of traditional Ireland, at the precise time of social crisis and cultural change. The mundane character and functional uses of everyday ceramic containers helps to mask a deep, culturally significant meaning. Coarse earthenware is a soft-paste ceramic that is fired at a fairly low tem perature of one thousand to fifteen hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Ceramic spe cialists distinguish this type of ceramic from three other basic types: fine earthenware, which is generally harder, whiter in body color, having thin ves sel walls; porcelain, which is white in color and usually fired twice; and stoneware, which is extremely hard, thick-bodied, and often gray in color.