Since this project will focus solely on artifacts from Early Medieval Ireland, it is part of my goal to look deeper into the artifacts we have, rather than relying heavily on extrapolation as I did in my previous work. Since I'm not in a time crunch and not in the middle of a full-time college schedule, response time is much less important than it was with my thesis. That means I can (gasp!) talk to people! And experts! whaaaaaaat? So anyway, I also found out that in the Irish Antiquities division of the museum is a (hopefully) lovely person by the name of Dr. Andy Halpin, who has expertise in the archaeology of Medieval Ireland and probably access to artifacts not on display. I hope he can help me by identifying objects that I couldn't find in my research but would provide valuable information for this narrow field of Early Medieval Irish dress. Maybe he even has access to photos of the objects that I can use in my research!
The Shrine of Stowe Missal and the Book Within It
The Shrine and the book of Stowe Missal look to be quite valuable to my research. Research suggests it was made sometime between 1026 and 1033, it could provide valuable insight into aspects of Irish culture that survived past the time when Ireland became largely Christian. For example, one of the scribes signed his name in Ogham script, which to my knowledge was the writing used by the Druids. I would link to that particular page, but I wouldn't recognize Ogham from the Irish Latin script if you shoved it in my face. Maybe someday, but not today. If you want to check it out for yourself, the entire script and the shrine have been photographed in high definition and are available on the Irish Script on Screen webpage, here, under Collections->Royal Irish Academy->MS d ii 3 and is labeled "The Stowe Missal & bookshrine." The whole Irish Script on Screen project looks fantastic and I think I'll be spending a lot more time there.
The shrine itself may be useful for garment research. There are human figures on five of the six outer sides and among them there may even be two women! These will merit further study for sure. The style of garments they wear indicates that they are carved in possibly contemporary fashion of the 11th century CE (i.e. when the shrine was made), but it could give hints to where the fashion had been in prior centuries.
The Killaloe Brooch
It looks as though the Killaloe brooch will be helpful, but in a much different manner than the Stowe Missal Book Shrine. Initial searching for more information on the brooch rendered very little, so I may have to rely just on what the museum has to say about it. The best information I've found thus far is available from the Irish National History Museum here and it includes place, time, and style as well as a beautiful photo. As for its use in my research, it may provide a better idea of the kinds of motifs that were common in worn art of the time. More importantly, it is a brooch in the style of the Tara brooch that is much plainer and made of silver, not gold. The design work is beautiful, but not nearly as fine as the designs found on the Tara brooch. To me, this implies that it would have been closer to an everyday brooch for someone wealthy, or possibly a fancy brooch for someone of middling wealth, such as a free farmer.
Well, that wraps it up for this post. I hope you enjoyed reading! I'll certainly be coming back here as I revisit the research I've done.
