antiquesandartireland.com

THE 1916 Rising Medal awarded posthumously to Joseph Plunkett comes up at Whyte’s Eclectic Collector sale in Dublin on Saturday January 21.  In 1941 Grace, the patriot’s widow, refused to attend a ceremony to receive the medal, probably in protest against the wartime policy of internment of IRA members. Grace Gifford married Joseph Plunkett in the prison chapel at Kilmainham seven hours before his execution, became a prominent republican, opposed the Treaty and was imprisoned by the Irish Free State government.   When the medal was posted to her she threw it in a bin, where it was rescued by a friend, Cathal Gannon.  Grace told him to keep it as she did not want to have it. It is estimated at 40,000-60,000.

The silk flag of the Costello Volunteers, raised in Mayo and Roscommon in 1779, is a rarity estimated at 20,000-30,000. The sale features 40 lots of early printed maps and charts of Ireland and its coast, a collection Staffordshire figures of Irish nationalists including Tone, O’Connell, Parnell and Gladstone, the George V ministerial box used by Sean Lemass from 1932-39, the 1886 bandleaders mace from the Brian Borhoime Band, Clontarf, a piece of shrapnel recovered from Rathdown Park, Terenure following the bombing by German aircraft in January 1941, gold coins and banknotes among almost 550 lots.