Born: Unknown (1800s), United Kingdom
Died: Unknown (1900s)
Country most active: United Kingdom, Ireland
Also known as: NA
This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Irish Biography and was written by Bridget Hourican. Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
Robinson, Mina (fl. 1893–1910), founder of the Irish Decorative Art Association, was probably born in Belfast; nothing is known of her early life. In the early 1890s she began holding art classes from her home in Cliftonville in that city and then, from 1894, from her studio in Garfield Chambers in the centre. Her classes were known as the Belfast school of pokerwork, and from them developed the Irish Decorative Art Association under the directorship of Robinson and Eta Lowry. The original aim was to make their work, and that of their women co-workers, better known. The first of what was to become an annual exhibition at Portrush, Co. Antrim, was held in July 1894 and enthusiastically praised by the Belfast News Letter. Robinson showed a pokerwork design and a chest in seventeenth-century style; Lowry exhibited art needlework. The following year, at the Belfast Art and Industrial Exhibition, Robinson showed an oak settle, or hall seat, with armorial and heraldic panels and a central panel decorated with figures of British royalty, priced £20. This was probably the same settle shown (1895) at the Arts and Crafts Society of Ireland exhibition in Dublin, which the Irish Times described as almost a piece of fine art. A settle answering to this description is now in the collection of the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum.
The scope of the school’s work broadened, and subsequent years saw members exhibiting friezes, mantelpieces, music stands, chairs, and panels for railway carriages. During the early years heraldic motifs and floral ornamentation (after art nouveau) predominated, but in the late 1890s Celtic patterns began to be used in response to the ‘Irish renaissance’ movement. At Portrush in 1902 the association showed a copy, bound in calf with a Celtic design, of Songs of the glens of Antrim by Moira O’Neill (Agnes Skrine). Teresa, Lady Londonderry, was a patroness of the association and bought a Celtic oak chest decorated with figures from the Cú-Chulainn cycle for the Londonderry estate at Mountstewart, Co. Down. She also used some of the books, picture frames, and a rose bowl for the queen’s room during her stay in Mountstewart in 1903.
The association was successful, and around 1905, with the advice of the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society (IAOS), it became a cooperative, having been run as a private venture for eleven years. Control then slipped from Robinson and Lowry to Arabella Fennell and Eveline McCoy. By 1910 the association had moved from Garfield Chambers to Wellington Place. Robinson’s subsequent movements and fate are not known.