The oldest icon of Irishness is the harp. Heraldically used since Tudor times, it increasingly became the national instrument of Ireland from the late 18th century onwards, and a badge for Irish national movements such as the Republican “United Irishmen” in the 1790s. In addition, Irish writers such as Thomas Moore and Lady Morgan associated themselves with the image of the harp or the harper, taking for their symbolic ancestor the celebrated early-18th-century harpist/poet Carolan, who provided a link with the country’s native, “bardic” past.

Against the heraldic badge of the harp, a more homely symbol of Ireland was the shamrock, a three-leaf clover which according to legend had been used by the country’s patron saint, St Patrick, to explain the religious mystery of the Trinity. Harp and shamrock were devices frequently used on objects or displays to mark them as nationally Irish.

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, additional icons of Irishness emerged: the Irish wolfhound, the round tower and the standing cross. Highlighted by antiquaries as characteristic of medieval Irish art, the “Irish cross” became ubiquitous and almost the default style for Irish gravestones. Book covers, illustrations, household utensils and knicknacks throughout the 19th century obsessively recycled this limited repertoire, which by the time the country gained its independence had come to be decried as trite and stereotyped. When in independent, post-1921 Ireland a Senate Committee under W.B. Yeats was to select designs for a new Irish coinage, these traditional icons (with the exception of the harp, the state’s official badge) were all rejected in favour of more modern styles. The Irish state and various Irish beer brands still use the harp badge, and the national airline still uses the shamrock.

Towards the end of the 19th century, two additional design motifs emerged from the realm of textual scholarship: the “Celtic” knotwork characteristic of illuminated manuscripts and filigree-decorated antiquities, and the insular half-uncial lettering. This font remained the official typeface for printing in Irish-Gaelic until well after the middle of the 20th century and is still widely used decoratively, as is the design motif of interlaced knotwork, used in embroidery, jewellery and decoration.

No national Irish dress emerged in the 19th century. Around 1900, some revivalists adopted the use of the kilt from the Scottish example (green or saffron-coloured, without tartan pattern). In Patrick Pearse’s St Enda’s it was part of the school uniform; but the fashion never caught on (except as part of uniforms in the New World, e.g. the Irish Regiment of Canada, or police marching bands in the US). The traditional women’s dress, the hooded shawl mantle, was used in paintings and theatre costume as a folk motif, but fell out of fashion as being the stigma of a low-class “shawlie”.