MA Fashion: 29th of November~ The Ephemera of Eternity: The Irish Catholic Memorial Card as Material Culture

Text: The Ephemera of Eternity: The Irish Catholic Memorial Card as Material Culture

Author: Mary Ann Bolger

Mary Ann Bolger received her BA in the History of Art and Architecture from Trinity College, in Dublin and her MA in History of Design from the Victorian and Art Museum. Bolger is currently pursuing her PhD on the topic of post-war Irish graphic design and works as a design historian and lecturer in critical theory at Dublin Institute of Technology.

The text The Ephemera of Eternity: The Irish Catholic Memorial Card as Material Culture is an essay written by Mary Ann Bolger; it discuss the relevance of memorial cards for Irish culture, for, as she argues in the text, Ireland is a country with a unique and strong mourning and death culture.

The text begins by explaining the start of memorial cards in Europe and eventually in Ireland. It explains that simultaneously with the spread of catholic practice in Ireland, what Emmet Larkin called the ‘devotional revolution’; there was a mass-consumption and mass-production of religious objects. Bolgernotes that, although attempts were done by the Academy of Christian Art of Ireland in 1930, they could not successfully replace mass-produced religious objects with artistic and ‘authentically Irish devotional objects based on traditional crafts’. In fact, the text emphasize the relevance of French prints, which became the mass-production standard model, not only in Europe but all over the world. It says: “(…) by the end of the nineteenth century, l’art Saint Suplice became the international style of Catholic Church art. From Ireland to Mexico to India to the United Stated, local art was replaced by good either imported from France or copied from French Standards.” (Bolger, 2011, p. 239) In addition, the text argues that this normalization claimed to keep the catholic literature clear of local heresies.

Later in the text, Bolger reverberates around the notion of purgatory in Ireland and connects memorial cards indulgences, such as piece of fabric taken from a saint garment - once marketed by the Church as an object that could redeem part of the purgatorial punishment. She explains that the design of memorial cards was/is thought to identify as clearly as possible the deceased, in a way that the target of the prayers is unmistakable. Bolger also discuss the use of photographs of the deceased in memorial cards, which she characterizes as an act of the bereaved acknowledging the pass of the loved one. In addition, the author consider the photographs used in memorial cards in nowadays. She notes that they represent a desire of erasing any signs of death by transforming the loved one into something artificial.

Example of Irish Memorial Card (Image: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQU3aUqTH-AMZWJIeBdvqT2aFtZBwX9cE-_kLTQWAiojNUKKF81WPLGZTVP2gKaEOha-Nz4My4ZCQFnqWDr1gnsw9ObffrwikArx2JT-apLyDGUgydOe3U_jy4dtx9B8XdwiWAQw460g4/s1600/Mollie+Halpin+In+Memoriam+card.jpg)

I found this text very interesting; as I was raised in a Catholic family, in which religious objects are common; in addition, as mentioned in the text, memorial cards are common in many countries, including Brazil. During the reading I could not stop wondering about the symbols behind mourning fashion. In my brief research, I found that mourning fashion (clothes) became popular and subsequently established in the West during the Victorian age, a trend started by royalty, in a time that became knew for its fascination for death.

(Image: http://www.todayifoundout.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/princess-mourning.jpg)

It is interesting to find Fashion Editorials that appropriate of symbols of mouring, like this photoshoot styled by Karl Templer, modeled by Anne Hathaway.