The Irish Catholic Memorial Card as Material Culture

The author of the article Mary Ann Bolger is a lecturer in design theory and history at Dublin Institute of Technology. She received MA from the Royal College of Art in London, where she is currently researching a PhD on topic of post-war Irish Graphic Design. Bolger is a member of the Institute of Designers in Ireland, the Institute of Creative Advertising and Design and the Design History Society. Her main research interests include typography, visual culture and the material culture of religion. (Bolger M.A. no date)

 

The book "Ireland, Design and Visual Culture: Negotiating Modernity 1922-1992" was written by Linda King and Elaine Sisson. It is a collection of several essays, written from different disciplinary and academic perspectives about Irish design and its visual and material culture history. The text of the twelfth chapter "The Ephemera of Eternity: The Irish Catholic Memorial Card as Material Culture", was originally written by Mary Ann Bolger. The text focuses on the design of the memorial cards. They are mass produced object intimately associated with Irish catholic mourning.

The author starts her text with describing funeral culture in Ireland. The author tells about the political uses of death and the funeral and on the folk tradition of the wake. The origins of the memorial cards came on the nineteenth century from the Netherlands to Germany and from France to the rest of Catholic Europe. They appeared for the first time in Ireland around 1870.

From the 1940’s, the memorial cards started to usually include a photograph to reflect identity of the deceased person. The author argues in the text that “memorial cards with photographs are much more complex entities than those without.” (Bolger M.A, 2011 p.242) The memorial cards help to understand of death and also how to deal with the loss.

The layouts of the memorial cards have not changed that much over the years, but new technology has modernized them. When erlier there were used potraits the author point out in the text that “today, digital technology allows fro the elimination of background detail, previously achieved by tightly cropping the photograph to face of the subject” (Bolger M.A, 2011 p.245) which makes it possible to have stylish and continuons outcome.

  

In my opinion the article is for people interested in Irish culture or religious studies, focusing on Catholic religion. The depth of the text and the way it is written would make me think it is  for specific academic audience. I also think it is for people who are interested how religion influences graphic design. 

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Fashion brand Dolce & Gabbana also borrows lot of inspiration from Catholic religion. In the Ready to Wear Fall/Winter 2013-2014 collection you can see Dolce & Gabbana using sacred mosaics of religious figures, rosaries and appropriation of the crucifix.

 

Dolce & Gabbana RTW Fall/Winter 2013-2014, inspired religious icon prints were a premonition to the recent media focus on the Catholic Church.

Reference:

Bolger, M.A. (2011) ´The Ephemera of Eternity: The Irish Catholic Memorial Card as Material Culture´, in King, L and Sisson, E. (eds), Design and Visual Culture: Negotiating Modernity, 1922-1992. Cork: Cork University Press, pp.235-247.

Mary Ann Bolger (No date) Available at: http://bavacs.blogspot.co.uk/p/mary-ann-bolger.html (Accessed: 28 November 2016)

Huffpost Style (2013) Available at: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/vogue.fr/vogue-paris-runway-report_b_2772514.html?slideshow=true#gallery/283376/0 (Accessed: 28 November 2016)

Image:

Huffpost Style (2013) Available at: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/vogue.fr/vogue-paris-runway-report_b_2772514.html?slideshow=true#gallery/283376/0 (Downloaded: 28 November 2016)

Vogue (No date) Available at: http://www.vogue.com/fashion-shows/fall-2013-ready-to-wear/dolce-gabbana/slideshow/collection#2 (Downloaded: 28 November 2016)