The purchase of the 'Tara' brooch in 1868

Although there are numerous official documents from the nineteenth century detailing the circumstances in which certain highly important Irish antiquities were purchased by the British government for deposit in the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin, their potential as sources for the study of the history of those objects has not been fully recognized. Amongst the items secured for posterity few if any exceeded the ‘Tara’ brooch in historic and aesthetic importance. By concentrating on the brooch, we can analyse some of the processes by which the Academy was able to collect the items it desired. Those very collecting processes helped to attribute significance to such items as, in the terminology of the era, ‘national antiquities’.

Art · Irish · Visual arts · Archaeological Research and Protection · Cultural Heritage Management and Preservation · Philosophy