It's back to the future for our practical Irish country furniture 

Pandemic has made a classic book on Irish country furniture more relevant than ever, says Property editor Tommy Barker

Claudia Kinmonth, author of 'Irish Country Furniture and Furnishings 1700-2000', pictured at Nano Nagle Place  Book Shop, Cork.

A just-released expanded and improved classic, the even-more colourful book Irish Country Furniture and Furnishings 1700-2000, published in November, is peculiarly relevant — thanks to a global virus.

The mighty work, considerably updating a 1993-first MA-based publication by the west Cork-based scholar of Irish culture, folkways and day-to-day rural living, Claudia Kinmonth, came out as the island of Ireland was, effectively, housebound — gratis of a second, 21st-century Covid-19 lockdown, making the most of home and hearth, and having to find innovative/make-do furnishing solutions.