I am to give a talk in the New Year to students at Grennan Mill Craft School here in Thomastown on the design, function and significance of Irish Country Furniture - the vernacular furniture of Ireland.

This is a subject close to my heart and is one to which I have no doubt I will return again and again.

Anyway, it his has me going through and collating suitable pictures for the talk.

Having, last, put up a post without any images, which is, I suspect, to break a golden rule of blogging, I will here offer a taster of country furniture pictures with a minimum of comment.
In fact, by way of a teaser, I will only post details of one commonly used motif, the fan, and save the full images, from which they were cropped, for another time and with a more comprehensive commentary

Various expressions of the fan detail from an exhibition of Irish Country Furniture I curated for the recently formed Irish Country Furniture Society for Kilkenny Arts Week in 1978

And you can just discern the fan details in the doors of Ryans the Tanners (referred to in the 'Thomastown's Shopfronts' post)

And here it is in these tops

And, to end, here, in a piece of Canadian furniture, the fan detail is taken to extraorinary heights!

And the influence of Irish furniture styles (and makers) on 19th. century Canadian (and American) furniture is another fascinating subject for another day...