{"title":"Monasteries \u0026 Tombs","description":"\u003cp\u003eStone, memory and landscape. Explore places of reflection through an imaginative artistic lens.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"the-sacred-hall-a4-art-print","title":"The Sacred Hall — A4 Art Print","description":"\u003cp\u003eAt Loughcrew in Meath a beam enters Cairn T on the mornings around the equinox and descends the engraved backstone, moving left to right for roughly fifty minutes and picking out circles, cup marks and radial sun motifs in sequence as it goes. The carvings resolve only while the light is travelling over them. Stand in the same chamber an hour later and the stone looks like very little.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Sacred Hall\u003c\/em\u003e works the same way: a floor that means one thing in the dark and another when the light reaches it.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"The Celtic Factor","offers":[{"title":"A4","offer_id":65834069688669,"sku":"TCF-THE-SACRED-HALL-A4-U","price":24.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0815\/5663\/5997\/files\/the-sacred-hall.jpg?v=1788716606"},{"product_id":"beneath-the-ancient-stars-a4-art-print","title":"Beneath the Ancient Stars — A4 Art Print","description":"\u003cp\u003eWhen Poulnabrone in the Burren was excavated, it held the commingled remains of at least thirty-five people — adults and children — placed there across some six hundred years. It was not a grave in the sense we use the word. It was an address that stayed open for twenty generations, and being put inside it meant joining people who had been dead for centuries already.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eBeneath the Ancient Stars\u003c\/em\u003e sits under a sky that is older again, which the builders knew perfectly well.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"The Celtic Factor","offers":[{"title":"A4","offer_id":65834069754205,"sku":"TCF-BENEATH-THE-ANCIENT-STARS-A4-U","price":24.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0815\/5663\/5997\/files\/beneath-the-ancient-stars.jpg?v=1788716606"},{"product_id":"window-to-the-island-a4-art-print","title":"Window to the Island — A4 Art Print","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn 1779 Gabriel Beranger, a Dutchman living in Dublin, set out to draw Ireland's antiquities on the reasonable assumption that they would not last. He was right. For several of the buildings he recorded, his watercolours are now the only evidence of what stood there — the stone was carted off for walls and houses within a generation of him sketching it.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eWindow to the Island\u003c\/em\u003e is the view he was trying to keep.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"The Celtic Factor","offers":[{"title":"A4","offer_id":65834069819741,"sku":"TCF-WINDOW-TO-THE-ISLAND-A4-U","price":24.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0815\/5663\/5997\/files\/window-to-the-island.jpg?v=1788716606"},{"product_id":"the-circle-of-memory-a4-art-print","title":"The Circle of Memory — A4 Art Print","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe kerbstones at Knowth carry the largest collection of megalithic art in western Europe — circles, arcs, serpentines, cut into a hundred and twenty-seven stones. Some of the carving is on faces that were set against the mound when it was built, covered on the day the work was finished and not seen again for five thousand years. The makers ornamented surfaces nobody would ever look at.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Circle of Memory\u003c\/em\u003e takes the pattern as they seem to have meant it: not display, but record.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"The Celtic Factor","offers":[{"title":"A4","offer_id":65834069885277,"sku":"TCF-THE-CIRCLE-OF-MEMORY-A4-U","price":24.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0815\/5663\/5997\/files\/the-circle-of-memory.jpg?v=1788716606"},{"product_id":"the-long-passage-a4-art-print","title":"The Long Passage — A4 Art Print","description":"\u003cp\u003eThere is a slot of stone above the door at Newgrange, separate from the entrance and easy to miss. It exists so that on a handful of mornings around the winter solstice the sunrise travels the full nineteen metres of the passage and reaches the chamber floor, for roughly seventeen minutes. Everything about the corridor — its length, its slope, its angle — was built to deliver that.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Long Passage\u003c\/em\u003e is not a way in. It is an instrument, and the light is what it was tuned to.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"The Celtic Factor","offers":[{"title":"A4","offer_id":65834069950813,"sku":"TCF-THE-LONG-PASSAGE-A4-U","price":24.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0815\/5663\/5997\/files\/the-long-passage.jpg?v=1788716606"},{"product_id":"the-candlelit-window-a4-art-print","title":"The Candlelit Window — A4 Art Print","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe openings in early Irish churches are narrow outside and wide inside, splayed through the thickness of the wall so that what little light entered was spread rather than concentrated. Glass was scarce and walls had to hold a roof. Every window was a negotiation between wanting to see and needing to stand.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Candlelit Window\u003c\/em\u003e shows the negotiation lost and solved the other way: bring your own light.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"The Celtic Factor","offers":[{"title":"A4","offer_id":65834075128157,"sku":"TCF-THE-CANDLELIT-WINDOW-A4-U","price":24.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0815\/5663\/5997\/files\/the-candlelit-window.jpg?v=1788716627"},{"product_id":"the-sea-gallery-a4-art-print","title":"The Sea Gallery — A4 Art Print","description":"\u003cp\u003eTradition has monks keeping a warning fire on Hook Head from the fifth century, for ships coming into Waterford past one of the worst approaches on the coast. Around 1172 the Normans replaced the fire with a tower, and that tower is still working — one of the oldest operating lighthouses anywhere. The job outlasted the religion, the language and the builders.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Sea Gallery\u003c\/em\u003e is a room whose entire purpose is to face the water.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"The Celtic Factor","offers":[{"title":"A4","offer_id":65834075193693,"sku":"TCF-THE-SEA-GALLERY-A4-U","price":24.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0815\/5663\/5997\/files\/the-sea-gallery.jpg?v=1788716628"},{"product_id":"cross-in-the-darkness-a4-art-print","title":"Cross in the Darkness — A4 Art Print","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn the Holy Week office of Tenebrae the candles are put out one at a time, psalm by psalm, until a single flame is left. That last one is not extinguished — it is carried out of sight behind the altar and brought back afterwards, still burning. The rite is built around the difference between a light going out and a light being hidden.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eCross in the Darkness\u003c\/em\u003e is the interval in between, when only the hidden one is left.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"The Celtic Factor","offers":[{"title":"A4","offer_id":65834075259229,"sku":"TCF-CROSS-IN-THE-DARKNESS-A4-U","price":24.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0815\/5663\/5997\/files\/cross-in-the-darkness.jpg?v=1788716627"},{"product_id":"the-moonlit-cloister-a4-art-print","title":"The Moonlit Cloister — A4 Art Print","description":"\u003cp\u003eWe picture medieval Ireland in bare grey stone because that is what survives. It is wrong. These buildings were rendered and limewashed, inside and out — bright, and meant to be seen from a distance across bog and water. The grey is six centuries of weather, not a choice anyone made.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Moonlit Cloister\u003c\/em\u003e is the only light that still returns them to white.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"The Celtic Factor","offers":[{"title":"A4","offer_id":65834080272733,"sku":"TCF-THE-MOONLIT-CLOISTER-A4-U","price":24.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0815\/5663\/5997\/files\/the-moonlit-cloister.jpg?v=1788716628"},{"product_id":"the-carved-archway-a4-art-print","title":"The Carved Archway — A4 Art Print","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe doorway at Clonfert has six orders of arch and a triangular pediment above it filled with carved human heads, staring out in rows. It went up around 1180, and there is nothing restrained about it — Irish Romanesque took ornament that had been developed for brooches and shrines and enlarged it onto a building, at a scale that had never been tried.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Carved Archway\u003c\/em\u003e is what happens when metalworkers are handed stone.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"The Celtic Factor","offers":[{"title":"A4","offer_id":65834080338269,"sku":"TCF-THE-CARVED-ARCHWAY-A4-U","price":24.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0815\/5663\/5997\/files\/the-carved-archway.jpg?v=1788716628"},{"product_id":"the-open-sanctuary-a4-art-print","title":"The Open Sanctuary — A4 Art Print","description":"\u003cp\u003eMost Irish churches did not fall down. They were opened. After the Dissolution the roofs came off first because the lead was worth money, and a building without a roof is finished inside forty winters. The picturesque ruin is the end of an accounting decision, and it was made deliberately, on paper, by someone who never visited.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Open Sanctuary\u003c\/em\u003e reads the same opening as an invitation instead. Both are true of the same hole in the roof.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"The Celtic Factor","offers":[{"title":"A4","offer_id":65834080403805,"sku":"TCF-THE-OPEN-SANCTUARY-A4-U","price":24.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0815\/5663\/5997\/files\/the-open-sanctuary.jpg?v=1788716628"},{"product_id":"the-heart-of-the-chamber-a4-art-print","title":"The Heart of the Chamber — A4 Art Print","description":"\u003cp\u003eBullaun stones sit at monastic sites all over Ireland: boulders with a smooth rounded basin worked into the top, usually holding rainwater. Nobody is certain what they were for — grinding, baptism, cursing, all have been argued. 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They were not doing astronomy. They were keeping account.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Sea at Night\u003c\/em\u003e is that view: the dark water, the islands, and someone writing it down.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"The Celtic Factor","offers":[{"title":"A4","offer_id":65834081681757,"sku":"TCF-THE-SEA-AT-NIGHT-A4-U","price":24.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0815\/5663\/5997\/files\/the-sea-at-night.jpg?v=1788716628"},{"product_id":"the-hidden-light-a4-art-print","title":"The Hidden Light — A4 Art Print","description":"\u003cp\u003eThere are thousands of souterrains under Irish fields — dry-stone passages dug beneath farmsteads and church sites, some with creep-holes narrow enough to force a person to crawl in singly, which is the whole idea if you are waiting on the other side. Cold storage most of the year, refuge on the bad days. Most were found by a plough or a collapsing cow.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Hidden Light\u003c\/em\u003e belongs to the Ireland that is still underneath the visible one.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"The Celtic Factor","offers":[{"title":"A4","offer_id":65834081747293,"sku":"TCF-THE-HIDDEN-LIGHT-A4-U","price":24.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0815\/5663\/5997\/files\/the-hidden-light.jpg?v=1788716628"},{"product_id":"the-watcher-in-the-hall-a4-art-print","title":"The Watcher in the Hall — A4 Art Print","description":"\u003cp\u003eTradition credits Bangor with the \u003cem\u003elaus perennis\u003c\/em\u003e — choirs relieving one another in rotation so that the psalms were never not being sung, through the night and through the year. Whether or not it ran unbroken, the ambition is clear enough in the Antiphonary the house left behind. It required somebody to be awake in that building at every hour, permanently.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Watcher in the Hall\u003c\/em\u003e is whoever had the small hours.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"The Celtic Factor","offers":[{"title":"A4","offer_id":65834081812829,"sku":"TCF-THE-WATCHER-IN-THE-HALL-A4-U","price":24.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0815\/5663\/5997\/files\/the-watcher-in-the-hall.jpg?v=1788716628"},{"product_id":"the-tall-window-a4-art-print","title":"The Tall Window — A4 Art Print","description":"\u003cp\u003eGothic came to Ireland with the friars, and it stayed modest. Franciscan and Dominican houses went up in the towns from the thirteenth century with a distinctive slender tower dropped between nave and choir — narrow enough to look temporary, tall enough to be the only thing on the skyline. In a great many Irish towns it still is.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Tall Window\u003c\/em\u003e is the shape that arrived late and then refused to leave.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"The Celtic Factor","offers":[{"title":"A4","offer_id":65834081943901,"sku":"TCF-THE-TALL-WINDOW-A4-U","price":24.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0815\/5663\/5997\/files\/the-tall-window.jpg?v=1788716627"},{"product_id":"the-candle-table-a4-art-print","title":"The Candle Table — A4 Art Print","description":"\u003cp\u003eEarly Ireland had an entire legal tract about bees. \u003cem\u003eBech Bretha\u003c\/em\u003e sets out who owns a swarm that settles on a neighbour's land, what is owed when bees sting livestock, and how the honey of a hive foraging across four farms should be divided. One reason the law took it so seriously: the altar burned beeswax, and somebody had to produce it.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Candle Table\u003c\/em\u003e is the end of a supply chain that ran through the courts.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"The Celtic Factor","offers":[{"title":"A4","offer_id":65834082009437,"sku":"TCF-THE-CANDLE-TABLE-A4-U","price":24.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0815\/5663\/5997\/files\/the-candle-table.jpg?v=1788716627"},{"product_id":"the-golden-cross-a4-art-print","title":"The Golden Cross — A4 Art Print","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe Cross of Cong was made around 1123 for Turlough O'Connor, and it is mostly oak. The gilt bronze, the enamel, the animal interlace — all of it is a skin over a wooden core, and the whole object exists to hold one small fragment said to come from the True Cross. The magnificence is packaging. The point is the splinter inside.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Golden Cross\u003c\/em\u003e keeps that logic: a shape built to make something invisible worth looking at.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"The Celtic Factor","offers":[{"title":"A4","offer_id":65834082238813,"sku":"TCF-THE-GOLDEN-CROSS-A4-U","price":24.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0815\/5663\/5997\/files\/the-golden-cross.jpg?v=1788716628"},{"product_id":"the-gathering-hall-a4-art-print","title":"The Gathering Hall — A4 Art Print","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe great assemblies met at burial grounds. Tailtiu and Carman were óenaig — fairs held at the graves of ancestors, where law was proclaimed, debts settled, horses raced and matches made. Nobody thought it strange to conduct the noisiest business of the year standing on the dead. The ancestors were the reason the ground had authority.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Gathering Hall\u003c\/em\u003e keeps that arrangement: the pattern in the floor, and the people around it.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"The Celtic Factor","offers":[{"title":"A4","offer_id":65834082304349,"sku":"TCF-THE-GATHERING-HALL-A4-U","price":24.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0815\/5663\/5997\/files\/the-gathering-hall.jpg?v=1788716628"},{"product_id":"the-morning-cloister-a4-art-print","title":"The Morning Cloister — A4 Art Print","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe cloister reached Ireland in 1142, when Malachy brought the Cistercians to Mellifont and with them a plan drawn in Burgundy: four ranges around a square, everything in its place. Within a century the older arrangement had largely gone. 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