Born: 28 July 1890, United Kingdom
Died: 1955
Country most active: United Kingdom
Also known as: NA
This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Irish Biography and was written by . Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
McKee, Eva Kathleen (1890–1955), craftswoman, was born 28 July 1890 at 32 Lothair Avenue, Belfast, daughter of James Henry McKee, builder, of that address, and Jane McKee (née Grogan). While working during the 1910s in the Irish Decorative Art Association (IDAA) – a Belfast-based exhibiting organisation of local craftworkers, founded in the early 1890s and reconstituted as a cooperative society in 1905 – she studied periodically in evening classes at the Belfast School of Art. After the first world war she joined Eveline McCloy (IDAA honorary secretary from c.1906) in reviving the association, working in partnership under the association’s name from their studio at 35 Wellington Place. After first exhibiting at the sixth exhibition of the Arts and Crafts Society of Ireland, in Dublin and Cork (1921), McKee – a member by 1925 of the Guild of Irish Art-Workers – appeared throughout the 1920s in all major exhibitions of Irish arts and crafts, winning medals at the 1922 Tailteann exhibition, Dublin, for both her pottery and decorative leatherwork. She and McCloy produced a prolific body of work in a wide range of media, largely employing the Celtic revival style characteristic of the IDAA since the turn of the century. Owing largely to their presence, Belfast in the 1920s was the foremost centre of craftwork in the Celtic or Irish style.
The stronger artistic personality of the two, McKee was responsible for most of the studio’s designs, her foremost specialities being painted pottery and coloured prints. Utilising factory-produced blanks from either the Belleek pottery, Co. Fermanagh, or from Wedgwood, England, she decorated such items as bowls, jugs, and candlesticks with original Celtic designs in bright colours, characteristically applied on a deep blue ground with occasional use of yellow lustre; she also executed painted ceramic tiles and brooches. The studio produced a varied range of coloured prints in the form of calendars, greeting cards, and bookmarks, often incorporating hand-lettered lines of verse from Irish poets, decorated with Celtic designs, landscapes, fairy themes, or arts-and-crafts-movement motifs. Aglow with colour in the tradition of Irish manuscript illumination, many of the prints were signed with variations on the gaelicised version of McKee’s name: ‘Aoife McAoda ’. Her print designs often depicted exotic long-plumed birds – either symmetrically entwined pairs, or a single bird within a circular panel – with a hint of art nouveau.
McKee created numerous exquisite designs for jewellery, largely executed by fellow Belfast craftswomen, employing both Celtic interlaced and spiral patterns, and leafy branch-and-tree motifs of English arts-and-crafts inspiration. Such designs for rings, earrings, brooches, pendants, and necklaces often included settings for precious stones, enamel, or ceramic. She produced decorative leatherwork modelled or incised with Celtic ornament, a noteworthy specimen being the book cover for a volume of poems by George Russell (‘Æ’), displayed at the 1924 Tailteann exhibition. She and McCloy also produced various domestic artefacts in such media as embroidery, repoussé metalwork, decorated woodwork (invariably with brightly coloured Celtic ornament on a dark green stained background), and enamelling. Although after 1933 McKee and McCloy ceased using the name of the IDAA – by then exclusively identified with the work of their studio – they continued as partners into the 1950s, moving location in the latter 1940s into premises in Donegall Place, Belfast. McKee, who was unmarried, died in Belfast in 1955. A substantial collection of her original printing plates and other items from the IDAA is in the Linen Hall Library, Belfast.