Rachel with an E

Musuem of the History of Bologna – Bologna, Italy.

Naturally. when I go abroad I like to visit museums to find out more about the area and it’s heritage and history. When I visited Bologna of this Year I visited the Museum of the History of Bologna situated in Bologna’s city centre. The museum details the story of Bologna from pre-historical times through the Roman and Renaissance up to the Twenty-First Century. With a nominal fee of eight euros and situated over several floors visiting the museum was a great way to find out more about the history of Bologna which I admit I knew very little about!

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Why Irish Women’s History?

Two Irish Colleens talking after a hard day cutting peat and transporting it back to their humble cottage. Barefoot, wearing a cloak and clothes probably made out of ‘homespun’ cloth. Who knows what they were chatting about; definitely not if anyone in the future would remember them or write about them. But people did, do, and will do in the future. The history of Irish women is multi-faceted and fascinating; I only touch one area of Irish women’s history as an a historian but many touch on all aspects that have affected Irish women’s lives over the last few centuries.

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Sophie Taeuber-Arp – A Retrospective Part Two.

Puppets from King Stag, 1918.

As mentioned in my last post I had the great opportunity to visit the Sophie Taeuber-Arp retrospective at the Tate Modern, London, in October 2021. Sophie Taeuber-Arp is like many women artists; an over-looked Modernist artist whose prolific output and truly multi-disciplinary. Taeuber-Arp worked in mediums as diverse as metal work and needlepoint to drawing and dance across a career that traversed the early part of the twentieth century.

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‘An ‘Un-put-downable’ book – Dear, Mrs Bird by A.J. Pearce.

 

The kitsch red text and bright turquoise background of the cover of Dear, Mrs Bird by A.J. Pearce piqued my interest from my local libraries ‘Recent Reads’ table. * The doubly beautiful end papers of a stylized bird holding an envelope in it’s beak drew me further in to read the first few pages** and instantly I knew that I would love reading this book as it covers several of my favourite historical topics at once; women’s magazines, women’s roles in World War Two and the struggle women faced to get themselves recognized in jobs in the early to mid-twentieth century.

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Through the Lens of a Woman: Eva Chichester and Amateur Photography c.1890-1920

 

Eva Chichester was a Sunday School teacher born and raised in Newcastle, County Down c.1872 and passed away c.1955. Her life spanned the end of the 19th century and saw the advances for women from the early 20th century to her death in 1955 aged 83. Eva was born into a well-to-do middle-class family and appears from photographs to be her parents only child. Although it is worthwhile noting that little is known about Eva’s life outside of her photographs, albums and travel journals that are now deposited in the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI). A systematic problem that is all to common with women’s history that scant details of their lives exist and we are left to pick up the pieces from what records do survive from their lives.

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