Afterword: Specters and Apparitions

Abstract

In 2010, two temporary exhibitions of replicated Irish medievalia appeared in Dublin and Chicago.¹ In Ireland, a show devoted exclusively to plaster-of-Paris reproductions of high crosses ran concurrently with one in Chicago, where Edmond Johnson’s copies of medieval metalwork appeared in Mid-Century: “Good Design” in Europe and America, 1850— 1950. In each venue, the design process took center stage, and the replicas were treated as works of art in-and-of themselves. Copies or not, their recognizable Celto-medieval imagery answered George Petrie’s pleas to salvage Irish antiquity for posterity. Rather than being disdained as simulacra, they were celebrated as spectral manifestations of Irishness in the modern world.