Only a very few of Ireland's early treasures have survived, and almost that have were included in "Treasures of Early Irish Art, 1500 B.C. to 1500 A.D." exhibited in 1977 at the Metropolitan Museum, among other U.S. venues. A majority of the objects were loaned from the National Museum of Ireland, Trinity College, Dublin, and the Royal Irish Academy. The exhibition and publication include illuminated manuscripts, which own their survival to having been jealously treasured in churches and monasteries. Nearly all the other objects are of the noble metals-gold, silver, and bronze-and so resisted destruction both exposure to the air and burying in the ground. The many objects of wood, iron, leather, and fabric that must have been their companions have disappeared. Those objects that did survive the attacks of nature had to face other constant perils in the course of Ireland's long and turbulent history: to be buried hastily without much chance of recovery; to be stolen and used to decorate the hall of a different lord or the altar of a rival monastery; to be plundered, broken up, and divided among a marauding gang who might mount the fragments as trophies; to be melted down and vanish forever in a pool of bullion metal.

The publication includes a map, a timeline of the objects in the exhibition as compared to history in Europe and the Mediterranean, and a selected bibliography. Following a detailed and informative introduction by G. Frank Mitchell, then President of the Royal Irish Academy, there are essays on each of five historical periods-The Bronze Age, the Beginnings of Christian Art, The Golden Age, age of the Vikings, and the Romanesque and Gothic periods-written by various leading scholars in the field. Color images and catalogue entries on the sixty-nine objects are grouped according to time period as well, appearing just after the period's corresponding essay. [This book was originally published in 1977 and has gone out of print. This edition is a print-on-demand version of the original book.]