The volume accompanies an exhibition at the National Museum of Ireland celebrating the material heritage of the Irish Franciscans in the late and early post-medieval periods. 

The volume catalogues some 50 of the finest pieces held by the Order, consisting largely of altar plate but also including sculpture, furniture and seal matrices. The catalogue is accompanied by a series of essays dealing with aspects of the material culture of the Irish Franciscans: church furnishings, objects of personal devotion, a unique collection of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century silver chalices, as well as contemporary secular silver in Ireland and English Catholic silver.

The volume will be of interest to historians, art historians and specialists in silver. It opens up a whole new perspective on the cultural heritage of Ireland in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, European influence on sacred art, patterns of patronage and the identification of regional silversmiths’ workshops in Ireland.