New chapter for the Dresser Project at library
WEXFORD Library will be the focal point for a major display of Wexford dressers for the duration of the opera festival as Michael Fortune brings his long-awaited Wexford Dresser Project to the town.
The Dresser Project is a body of photographic and research-based work conducted by artist/folklorist Michael over the past year exploring people’s connections with their humble kitchen dresser and the stories and folklore surrounding them.
The Wexford strand of the project was commissioned by The Arts Department of Wexford County Council and will be officially launched as part of the Wexford Festival Opera on Friday (October 20) at 11 a.m. and will run until the end of December.
Michael will transform the windows of Wexford Library on Mallin Street in Wexford Town with 16 large images of various dressers from around the county, the project part of a larger umbrella project he has been conducting around Ireland for the past three years in conjunction with the National Museum of Ireland - Country Life and the Folklore Department of University College Cork.
However, Michael said his Wexford strand has surpassed all expectation with record numbers of people participating from throughout the county.
‘Everyone has a connection to the dresser in Wexford. It is a piece of practical furniture that crossed all social divides and everyone from the farm-labourer, small farmers, big farmers and the landed gentry had a dresser in their home.’
In the Duffry area he came across by accident three identical dressers made by the same family of carpenters called O’Neill from Marshalstown in the 1920s.
‘They have an unusual middle drawer which we assume was for cutlery and with a little digging each household came up with the maker’s name, which pointed back to the townsland of Ballydaw in Marshalstown,’ he said.
When the dresser left the kitchen they often took on a new role by the men who adopted them, taking them intotheir sheds to house their tools and implements from around the farm and yard
‘The very concept of a dresser has remained in our domestic landscape since the 18th century. We have detailed accounts from North Wexford from the 19th century by folklorist Patrick Kennedy and the position, scale and of role these dressers had then still remains. In fact, many of these dressers go back this far,’ said Michael. One thing which surprised him during his research was the amount of dressers left untouched in abandoned farmhouses.
He has documented three dressers that still have the mugs and plates left on them since the people passed away in the 1940’s and ‘50s.
The inspiration behind the project was his late grandmother Jane Fortune and her dresser while in a sad twist of fate, his own mother Ann Fortune from Ballygarrett, who he’d only photographed beside her own dresser in May this year, passed away after a sudden illness in late June.
For further information visit www.thedresserproject.ie