Airgeadoir 400 years of Cork silver and Gold

The project was initiated in 2004 and commenced in April 2005. A mobile exhibition held in the Crawford Municipal Gallery, Cork, as a part of the European Capital of Culture 2005, commissioned and curated by Mr. John Bowen of Bowen Construction. The exhibition showcased an incredible display of the work of Corks silversmiths and goldsmiths over fourcenturies, an extensive collection, many pieces never exhibited publicly before. The brief specified that the exhibition needed to be adaptable to other galleries, also the silverware (some of which came from the Victoria and Albert Museum) needed to be totally secure and the showcases needed to be versatile due to the number and size of the pieces on exhibit. Intotal there were approx 165 pieces. Breaking the rules of conventional exhibition methods for silver and gold the showcase materials, artefact organisation and lighting were reanalysed as a part of the design process.Alternative lighting techniques played a key role in the aesthetic and success of the display of silver. Traditionally blue toned light and environment is used to display silver to bring out the natural characteristics, but with the availability and development of new lighting, the opportunity to experiment with convention exposed other possibilities. Fluorescent tubes (with colour designation ‘white light’ and a correlated colour temperature of 4000 Kelvin) combined with PMMA fibre optics tailed from a halogen light generator (white light - 4200 Kelvin) were combined within the cabinets behind a pearl acrylic to generate a ‘pure white environment for the silver to be displayed in.The juxtaposition of material, the almost sanitised pearl acrylic and glass against the dark Corten steel skin made for a dramatic combination. The circulation and orientation of the exhibition was defined by the arrangement of the cabinets and the contrasting light levels throughout the exhibition. The exhibition proved to have the highest number of visitors to the Crawford Gallery for a single exhibition and in April 2007 the exhibition is being reconfigured to work in the Hunt Museum, Limerick, Ireland.