Bootscrapers of Dublin documents an architectural detail often found in 18th and 19th Century dwellings in Western Europe.
These bootscrapers were designed to remove ‘the street’ from your feet, and invented at a time when a taste for civic strolling in parks and boulevards became fashionable. Upon return from these leisurely jaunts, the people needed to décrottoir (‘remove excrement’) before entering the home. Enter the Bootscraper.
This is an ongoing project, first started in Dublin 8, with aims of exploring further dwellings of the same period around Dublin. It seeks to interrogate the notion of archiving; how and why we take stock for future generations.
With a background in Architecture, my belief is that documenting the built environment and its details is a generations’ responsibility. I enjoy looking out for the overlooked.
These Bootscrapers, and their subsequent appropriations, are also wonderfully weird.
A series of the bootscrapers will be exhibited throughout the month of October in Mish Mash Cafe (Capel St.) with prints for sale from Ste’s website www.ste.ie
Words: Ste Murray
Photographs: Ste Murray
