Albert, Ernest & The Titanic

Copper House Gallery, off Synge St, Dublin Mon-Fri 10am-5pm Until Nov 27 thecopperhousegallery.com 01-4784088

Copper House Gallery, off Synge St, Dublin Mon-Fri 10am-5pm Until Nov 27 thecopperhousegallery.com01-4784088

Working towards his Master’s degree at NCAD, Jamie Murphy applied himself to making a book that relates, in visual form, the story of the Titanic’s two resident printers. An oceanliner is a world in microcosm, requiring an entire support system and all manner of skills, designers and printers among them.

Abraham “Albert” Mishellany and Ernest Corbin designed and printed “the restaurant menus, stationery, note pads, programmes of events” and even the tickets. In the aftermath of the disaster, these ephemera, as with virtually everything associated with the Titanic, became much sought after mementoes and have sold for thousands at auctions.

Murphy has commemorated the printers in the medium of linocut, one of the most basic printmaking techniques. The book he has made with the images, plus the kind of letterpress methods employed by his subjects, also uses powder from coal salvaged from the site of the wreck.

READ MORE

Can’t See That? Catch This

Idionumina Hughes, Graignamanagh, Co Kilkenny Until Nov 18

Aidan Dunne

Aidan Dunne

Aidan Dunne is visual arts critic and contributor to The Irish Times