The Bogwood Story

Bogwoods are retrieved from the boglands where they have been buried for over 5,000 years and have come to surface as a result of turf production. In famine times in Ireland these woods proved to be an important source of fuel, and were also used for ropes, furniture, torches and thatches. For to all that worked the land the relics of the subfossil timber were generally seen as a nuisance, cluttering the bogs and obstructing the business of turf- cutting. We say ‘generally’, and should add ‘in our time’, for these roots and trunks and fallen branches - tough and, one would say, intractable survivors of vast stretches of geological and paleobotanical time - had served generations of irish people well. Harvested and conditioned by generations of rural expertise (particularly during the famine), bogwoods were once a very important part of their domestic and communal economy. They were in fact an essential resource for the tenant farmer, as for the landless and near landless, when the landlord retained to himself and his household the felling and use of ‘standing timber’. And as the forests were stripped and sold, the bogs provided an answer to the question: cad a dhéanfaimid feasta gan adhmad? For bogwoods could, when properly dried and seasoned provide an excellent fuel; and at Christmas, bloc mór na Nollag, the Yule log, was commonly of giúis or bog fir. The saor adhmaid could fashion a roof of timber, or a chair, or a table, or a loom or a boat.

Churns and milk-pails and butter-boards were all made of bogwood. So were ropes for various purposes… on the farm, in the boatyard, even for thatching. The bogwood torches and ‘candles’ - geatairí giúise, provided domestic lighting, and lights for fishing (legal and otherwise). As to the illumination provided by the bogwood tapers, the journal Béaloideas has record of a Kerryman who read ‘ a whole series of Dickens novels’ by their light! The method used to find tree trunks in intact bog remains unexplained today. People would search bogs for areas wherever the early morning dew, frost or snow disappeared first, these areas suggested the presence of buried wood. A long metal probe was used to confirm the presence of timber. It is said that an experienced hand was able to tell the size, the way in which the timber lay, the tree species and the quality of the timber, all with a metal pole.

The Downhill Harp Donnchadh Ó Hámsaigh (1695-1807), known in English as Denis O'Hampsey, Hampson or Hempson, was a contemporary of Irish harper Carolan. The ‘Downhill Harp’ was made of bog timber in or near Baile na Scríne in Co. Derry. It was presented to Ó hAmhsaigh (O’Hampsey) on his eighteenth birthday. Harp and harper survived to have an honoured place at the Belfast Festival of 1792. The harp, now a famous instrument with provision for 30 strings,was made by Cormac O Kelly of Ballynascreene. The bogwood harp was inscribed by him with the following poem,

In the time of Noah I was green, Since his flood I had not been seen, Until Seventeen hundred and two I was found By Cormac O Kelly underground: He raised me up to that degree That Queen of Musick you can call me.

Hempson played with the Downhill Harp most of his life. When he died in 1807 at the age of 112, his harp was taken to Downhill for safekeeping, by his friend and Patron the Rev. Hervey Bruce. The Guinness family acquired the harp in the 1960's and it can now be seen in the Guinness Hop Store exhibition centre in Dublin.

Bog oak souvenirs, generally speaking, some not particularly attractive articles in themselves, it is desirable - for the sake of completeness - not to pass over in silence these bog oak objects which were made for sale over many decades, chiefly in Dublin. Thus Lucas provides us with a reluctant introduction to the second half of his brief account of the past use of bogwoods. What might be called the industrialisation of bogwood dates from the early nineteenth century. It flourished in Victorian times, after which it went into a slow decline and was moribund by the Second World War. In its heyday those engaged in the industry produced a vast corpus of work: furniture, statuary’ domestic bric-a-brac and a wide range of items of personal adornment, including brooches, bracelets, and other forms of jewellery. Many of the ‘Irish’ artefacts were either of the wolfhound/Round Tower variety, or else celebrated a drunken Paddy (with shillelagh and pig) but there were also models of castles and abbeys, ‘Tara’ brooches and - one very popular item - the Brian Boru Harp.

Neville Irons a collector of Bog oak work, wrote the following in the Irish Arts Review in 1987,

“While there can hardly have been a more intrinsically Irish craft, either in aspect or material, than the beautiful carvings in bog oak and yew of the nineteenth century, yet up to now these have been received little serious assessment. The Art Journal of 1865 did give some account of the origins of the craft. More recently the only published information I have found are six paragraphs in the article “Irish Victorian Jewellery” by Elizabeth McCrum, Assistant Keeper, Ulster Museum, five paragraphs in The Rediscovery of Ireland’s Past, The Celtic Revival, 1830 - 1930 by Jeanne Sheehy, and a three page article by Charlotte Raftery, entitled “Up from the Bog”, published in Cara.

Research is now removing the layers of surface dust to reveal and industry, the magnitude of which has hitherto been almost totally unsuspected. Not only the carvers themselves, but retailers and stylistic traditions, have come clearly into focus and the bustling social background against which this Irish minor art flourished has emerged. Patrick McGuirk is generally credited with having been the first professional practitioner of the craft. It is said that he served in the British army, and while at his last posting, Gibraltar, he exercised his carving skill on the local hard coconut shells. He later returned to Ireland and in 1821 presented a carved bog oak walking-stick to George IV during that monarch’s visit to Dublin. However, as it was reported that McGuirk presented examples of his carving to the Duchess of Richmond, who was so impressed that she suggested that he use his skill on his native bog oak, one must conclude that his return to Ireland occurred some years earlier while the Duke of Richmond was lord Lieutenant of Ireland, (1807 - 1813).

John Neate (1796 - 1838), is mentioned in The Art Journal, 1865, as having “so far back as 1820 manufactured articles from bogwood and was certainly among the first to profess it, if he did not actually originate the trade”. Neate lived in Killarney, where the baptisms of a daughter and a son are recorded in the Roman Catholic parish register in 1826 and 1831. An elder daughter, Anne, born 1817, married Cornelius Goggin, who may have been trained by John Neate, and who, himself, became a very successful manufacturer of bog oak artifacts. John Neate’s tombstone at Muckross Abbey records his death on March 1st, 1838 aged 42 and that of his wife, nee Ellen Denahy, on December 24th, 1865. Cornelius Goggin and his wife are interred in the same plot.

Although the references to McGuirk and Neate are perhaps the earliest to the professional craft, it no doubt existed at an earlier date throughout the country for the fashioning of small domestic utensils such as spoons and other cooking implements, small furniture, etc. What is certain is that by the time of the 1851 Great Exhibition in Britain, and of the 1853 Great Industrial Exhibition in Dublin, it was a firmly and fashionable established feature of the Arts and Crafts scene in Ireland. The 1851 Exhibition catalogue lists several Irish manufacturers and there must surely have been others throughout the country working on a more humble scale in what started essentially as a cottage industry.

Of the Irish manufacturers listed in the catalogue of the Great Exhibition of 1851, certain basic information can be gleaned and detailed examination of the specialities of individual craftsmen goes some way towards solving problems of attribution and identification. From the entry of the furniture maker, Arthur J. Jones of St. Stephen’s Green, he seems to have been the most prolific; listed as a designer and manufacturer, his exhibits ranged from massive suites of drawing-room furniture embellished with the Irish emblems and mottoes, to a statue of Queen Victoria with the British lion and the Irish wolfhound at her feet, her chair smothered in shamrock tresses, the whole mounted upon an omnium heavily carved with “Irish” themes. There was also a teapot decorated with emblematic beasts taken from Flaxman’s figures on the south front of the Custom House, Dublin, representing the four divisions of the earth. The front panel had a relief carving representing Hibernia, seated on the basalt cliffs on the Giants Causeway, inviting commerce to the shores of Ireland. Another piece was a statue of the High King of Ireland, Brian, Boroimhe, (Brian Boru), designed, like that of Queen Victoria, to adorn the top of an elaborately carved omnium. At Dublin in 1853 Jones and Sons’ exhibit included a three-tier omnium, a loo table, chairs and a pole screen with bas relief of an Irish kern of the tenth century, all in Irish bog yew.

Although it is obvious that the Irish cabinetmakers utilized their native bog oak to grand effect, it was in the field of jewellery and small ornaments that its greatest popularity was achieved. From the 1820’s onward the fashion for these charming confections grew rapidly and as already stated, by the middle of the century, what was once a cottage pastime had become a highly organized and lucrative commercial undertaking. The diversity within the jewellery section alone was astounding. Just how much the royal, viceregal and aristocratic patronage encouraged popularity and general acceptance is not discernible but it must surely have had a considerable effect. Bog oak jewellery ranges from the relatively simple to the elaborate, the latter very often embellished with "Wicklow gold", silver or "Irish diamonds" (pyrites), often referred to in Ireland as "Summer Diamonds" (some are diamonds and some are not!). Killarney, by the middle of the century, had what was reputed to be a flourishing tourist trade and because of this a local carved bog oak industry soon evolved. The raw, unworked, timbers were plentiful in that beautiful area and account for the predominance of brooches depicting both Muckross House and Abbey, both close to Killarney.

During the nineteenth century spectacular finds of ancient Irish jewellery were made. These were eagerly copied by both the conventional and bog oak jewellers. Thus three basic categories were established within the genere: Irish emblems - such as the harp and shamrock - designs depicting flora and fauna, and emulations of Irish antiquities. The 1852 Great Industrial Exhibition in Ireland displayed almost identical items in the genre to those shown in London in 1851 but had the effect of further popularizing the wares of the bog oak manufacutrers in the land of their origin. In the catalogue of the 1853 Dublin exhibition, is a contemporary description of bog wood, explaining the origin of the fashionable and novel medium. “The peculiar appearance of bogwood arises from the fact that it has been for centuries embedded in the bog land of Ireland. The ebony colour of bog oak, distinguishing it from pine, is due to the chemical combination of the gallic acid of the wood with the iron held in solution in the water of the bog. A real black dye is thus produced; just as, in the manufacture of writing ink, the black colour is made by the addition of copper or sulphate of iron to a decoction of galls. Pine and yew timber, unlike the oak, presents only a light fawn or brown colour, simply because it contains a smaller quantity of gallic acid. The wood thus saturated with iron is effectively preserved from decay and the action of dry-rot, by the fact that the albumen of the tree has been rendered perfectly insoluble by the action of the metallic salt contained in the bog-water.

The discovery of the perfectly-preserved woods of the Irish bogs, and the chemical explanation for their singular preservation have led to an artificial, but scientific, adaption of the same means of preserving timber, by injecting into the pores of the wood a solution of corrosive sublimate, or creosote oil, or baryta salts and sulphate of iron, (sulphate of baryta), which latter process increases the weight of the wood very considerably, and in fact, converts it into a kind of stone. How long the timber may have lain useless in the bogs of Ireland, or from what cause whole forests became, as it were, submerged, it is impossible to say; but certain it is that the roots of the trees have remained in their original position, the outer surface appears to have been burned or charred, while the trunk and branches have never been found; a fact that is alluded to in the folk saying that "the devil set fire to the world, but God put it out with a deluge! Irish bog wood has been extensively employed in the manufacture of brooches, bracelets and beads. The black colour, because of the high polish it is capable of receiving, renders it valuable for such purposes" Bog oak (dáir portaigh) made up many of the forested areas of ancient Ireland and centuries ago as the forest were felled, the great roots remained. Those sites usually coincide with the bog sites of today. Bog deal (déil portaigh) and bog yew (iúr portaigh) were, and are, also to be found, although the latter never reached the popularity of bog oak as a carving medium.

There are many folk legends surrounding the old bog sites of Ireland, especially during the hours of darkness: it was, and perhaps still is, a commonly held belief that when the mist enveloped the bog and the blue flame (from static electricity), danced across the surface at dusk, it was a sure indication that "the little" people were cooking their supper. Then, just before darkness fell "Jackof- the-lantern" could be seen shimmering from place to place and although many tried to follow, none could catch him and some perished in the attempt. This poetic illusion was, in fact, the evening-feeding snipe whose wings as he foraged had become impregnated with tiny drops of bog sulphur which, as the bird flew, sprinkled down " like the falling stars". These and other romantic folk legends no doubt enchanced the sales patter of bog oak dealers and were cherished and embroidered upon by nineteenth-century travellers.

When the timbers were first brought to the surface from the airless depths of the bog they exhibited a mid-brown to dark brown hue, but on contact with oxygen, semi-petrification soon set in, causing the wood to take on an ebony colour. It was therefore essential, if carving was to be undertaken, that the wet and pliable state be preserved, thus enabling easier fashioning. Then full petrification took place, rendering the finished item deep black and almost steel-hard. Irish bog oak has often, and indeed erroneously, been compared with Whitby jet, which although it is eminently more polishable, is easily chipped and damaged, and in the finished state bears hardly any resemblance to the ancient Irish wood.”

Nowadays bogwood is mainly found through activities such as turf cutting and land drainage. In bogs where peat is being extracted commercially, tree stumps and trunks are dragged out of the peat with a mechanical digger to the edge of the bog. This is essential, as the wood remains, block peat milling machines. Since the 1940’s, the timber has been left on the side of the bogs, piled high. It is this wood that the artists of the Celtic Roots Studio take into their workshop to dry and finally use for carving.

Extract with kind permission Bogwood study by A T Lucas IPCC website Irish Arts Review, Neville Irons (extract) Photographs: Bord na Móna