Ballinakella Press

Florence Vere O´Brien, born in 1854. Throughout her life Florence had used her skills, much as we would use a camera today, to record the places visited. She had travelled much, with her adoptive parents, throughout Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Germany and Russia; and eventually to Ireland. Her sketch-books contained over a thousand images, and the journals of Florence, which she had maintained throughout her life, and which were very well written. Herein we have matched the sketches with related passages from the journals. The Irish sketches and watercolours are dated between 1880 and 1915, and are part of a large body of her art work. She was a person of quite exceptional abilities and a talented artist, as well as designer for embroidery and lace. Founder of the Limerick Lace School, and the “Clare Embroidery”.

This enticing 250 page book is the result of painstaking research into the turbulent life of clergy and laity of the (ancient Celtic, catholic and protestant) many faceted Church of Ireland during political upheavals, the influences of plantation and of ecclesiastical establishment.