Tablecloth
A centre piece of the exhibition in Waterford Treasures covering the period of the Decade of Centenaries is a table cloth embroidered with the signatures of some fifty people who played a prominent role in local and national affairs. Compiled by a local woman, the table cloth is a veritable who’s who of Ireland’s and Waterford’s political, economic and social life of the first decades of the 20th century. It includes the signatures of W.T. Cosgrave, de Valera, Griffith, Archbishop Mannix, Countess Markievicz, Richard Mulcahy, Pádraig Pearse, Margaret Pearse, Caitlín Bean Cathal Brugha and Count John F McCormack. Signatories’ numbers in Frongoch internment camp accompany many of the signatures. Frank Aiken’s signature is in Japanese characters and the Waterford Harbour Master’s in semaphore. The exhibition Other Voices, Ordinary People Extraordinary Lives tells the story of the period, teasing out the complexity of a period of change that saw support ebb away from John Redmond (MP for Waterford) and Home Rule through the Rising, War of Independence, establishment of the Irish State and Civil War and continuing right up to the 1970s. The table cloth is an extraordinary ‘autograph book’ of an extraordinary time.