A Celebration of Ireland's Wine Heritage

< The WineGeese Society

Winegeese Exhibition
The Winegeese: A Celebration of Ireland's Wine Heritage
Curator: Ted Murphy
Venue: The Dalton Gallery, Cork Public Museum, Fitzgerald Park
Dates: 13 June 2005 to 18 July 2005

The exhibition took place at the recently renovated Cork Public Museum located on the banks of the River Lee in Fitzgerald Park, Cork. The Winegeese are the emigrant Irish families and their descendants, who from the 17th century onwards engaged in the wine trade in the various countries of their adoption. Their names and labels have become synonymous with quality wines in many of the finest wine growing regions around the world.

Ted Murphy has brought together a unique collection of wine related artefacts such as wine vessels dating from the Bronze Age (2300 - 1900 BC), Irish drinking glasses and decanters dating from the 18th century, and an extensive collection of early corkscrews.

• Black glazed Greek pottery stemmed wine cup, Hellenistic 2nd century BC. It is thought the first wine to arrive in Ireland came from Massilia, present day Marseilles, which had been colonized by the Greeks in the 6th century BC.
  
  
• The Cork Glass Company operated between the last quarter of the 18th century and the early decades of the 19th century. Ireland was one of the principal glass manufacturing centers in Europe. During this period Irish glassware was acclaimed throughout the world, and enormous quantities of decanters, wine glasses, and wine rinsers were shipped to America.
  
  
• Cork cut glass decanter with pillar flutes pattern, circa 1800. Huge quantities of Cork and Waterford wine drinking vessels were exported to America between 1782 and 1822.
  
  
• Cork Wine Glass, c. 1780 - 1830. The funnel-shaped bowl of this glass is decorated below the rim with a horizontal band of parallel lines and zigzag lines. The bowl is interspersed with swags of stars connected by beads with oval pendants. The base of the bowl has a handsome circlet of tapered flutes supported by a plain stem and conical foot. Wineglasses known to have been owned by George Washington are stylistically similar in every detail of structure and distinctive decoration, effectively indicating their provenance to have been Cork Glass Company.
  
  
• Antique corkscrew with silver mounted stag antler handle and stem with perfect helical worm, c. 1870. The earliest known reference to a cork of a wine vessel being pierced by an iron device is attributed to the 9th century Irish scholar, Sedulius Scottus, who had settled at Liege in Belgium.