A huge volume of 250 pages of (510 by 360 by 110mm), the book brings together the work of 121 artists, 143 poets and 9 composers who painted, drew and wrote directly on the vellum.
Eamonn Martin and Gene Lambert of Mills Trust and Theo Dorgan of Poetry Ireland initiated the project in 1989.
The Book is bound by Anthony Cains and housed in a box by Eric Pearce with a silver clasp by Brian Clarke.
The Book was a joint venture between Clashganna Mills Trust Ltd and Poetry Ireland Ltd. Business manager for the project was Eamonn Martin, and the editors were Theo Dorgan and Gene Lambert.
When Eamonn Martin and Gene Lambert of Clashganna Mills met Theo Dorgan of Poetry Ireland in March 1989, what all had in mind was a project that would raise substantial funds while at the same time being a venture worthwhile in itself.
A pigment had to be found which would be flexible enough to accommodate a range of working practices, which swept from a delicate watercolour technique to something verging on impasto.
The poets, scratching away with dip-pens on a surface pitted with microscopic bumps and hollows, found themselves writing with unfamiliar or half-forgotten implements on a material light years away from bleached, flat paper.
Cains had been hoarding a Sardinian goatskin -a beautiful naturally cured skin acquired 25 years before when he worked on the restoration of manuscripts in the Florentine libraries after the great floods.
Gandon Productions, on commission from RTÉ, came forward with a proposal for a documentary on the making of the Book, to be directed by Tony Barry.
Visiting poets from the USSR, USA, Romania, Czechoslovakia, the Caribbean and Italy were invited to contribute, their participation serving to underline the essentially cosmopolitan nature of Irish art and writing today.
From Britain, the Poet Laureate, Ted Hughes, contributed two poems in tribute to the Professor of Poetry at Oxford, Seamus Heaney.
Produced by Niall McCarthy and directed by Tony Barry, Pages for the Great Book of Ireland, with a specially commissioned soundtrack by Jim Lockhart, was broadcast on 18 March 1990.