Martello Tower No. 14, Seapoint

Martello Tower No. 14 stands on the rocky shore at Seapoint, on the south Dublin coastline between Blackrock and Monkstown, one of a chain of squat circular fortifications built between 1804 and 1815 against a feared Napoleonic invasion that never came. Early's etching emphasizes the geometric purity of the form: circular plan, battered walls, flat roof platform, exactly the reduced architectural object her practice favors. Aquatint provides the tonal weight of the granite block and the surrounding tidal rocks while etched line preserves the parapet and the entrance recess. The print extends her catalogue of Ireland's coastal defensive structures, treated alongside lighthouses as a single typology of edge-of-sea building. The numbered designation in the title is itself architectural; Early names the tower as the Ordnance Survey would, by index rather than by romantic epithet, an indication of how her intaglio practice positions itself relative to its subject.