They were a staple in every rural Irish home for generations – the dresser with the good delph on display for all to see – and a new book by an American academic looks at how, in many ways, they told the stories of our lives.

Professor Meredith S. Chesson is an archaeologist based at the University of Notre Dame in the US who has been travelling to Galway’s islands of Inishbofin, Inishturk and Inishark and mainland towns of Clifden and Cashel since 2011.

For the last 14 years, she has been researching, excavating, examining and cataloguing dressers and delph and conducting interviews with locals about their family heirlooms.

And in Irish Dressers and Delph: Homemaking Through Time, her new book published last week with launches on Inishbofin and in Clifden, she has catalogued more than 1,600 objects and 21 dressers.

And within all of that, there are some hugely personal stories, according to the author.

“One interviewee shared with me how to this day she eats off the same 1950s plate every morning. It was her father’s favourite plate, so she ‘has breakfast with her father every morning’,” she said.

“One tureen we documented was lovingly referred to as ‘The Bank’ by one family, as the mother in that home had stored her purse there and sent her children to ‘The Bank’ when she needed to do the shopping,” she added.

Her interest in Irish dressers and delph was sparked after calling into friends’ homes on Inishbofin while she was conducting archaeological research on Inishark.

As an archaeologist, her chief interests centre on the way human beings of the past and present construct and experience difference in their daily lives, especially in their homes – so this dovetailed perfectly.

Irish Dressers and Delph: Homemaking Through Time explores how kitchen dressers and delph can teach us about our past and help people transform their house into a home in the past and today.

The book describes how people living in coastal areas of Galway and Mayo, including three islands off the west coast of Ireland, used their dressers and delph collections to craft meaningful lives over the last two centuries, and how their dressers and delph connected one generation to the next.

“As an archaeologist, my work focuses on investigating how people transform their houses into proper homes, and in particular the belongings with which they surround themselves to tell their own individual and family stories,” Professor Chesson explained.

“I know that dressers and the belongings they display have held a very special place in Irish homes for generations and still are cherished in homes throughout the country.

“At first glance, the dresser’s job is simply to store possessions – including delph, holy water, family heirlooms, money, and travel souvenirs.

Pictured: Professor Meredith S. Chesson launching her new book published by Cork University Press “Irish Dressers and Delph: Homemaking Through Time” in UCC.