Standard Setters: Seamus Gill Prizing Craft
Eleanor Flegg discusses Irish silversmith Seamus Gill, chosen by a panel of experts on behalf of the Crafts Council of Ireland to acknowledge consistency in design excellence


Irish silver, having spent the 20th century in quiet retirement, is currently enjoying a bit of a high. There are several contributing factors behind this revival, but no small credit must go to a small number of talented silversmiths who have worked magic with the metal. Among the best of these, Seamus Gill has focused on reinterpreting the traditional forms of 18th- and 19th-century table top silverware – the candelabra, the vase, and the candlestick. Stylistically his pieces are easygoing. They will look good in any style of interior, but sit particularly well in a contemporary setting. They are also true to their functional roots. If he makes a teapot it will pour well. A candlestick will look best when holding a lit candle. A spoon will be satisfying to hold.

The first thing that you notice about Gill’s silverware is its sheer classical beauty. His forms are uncomplicated, elegant, and fluid. They flow like the movement of liquid. The light reflects from slightly irregular surfaces which show the pattern of tiny hammer marks. Most commercial silverware is produced by a stamping process, like that of minting a coin, and has a uniform surface, but Gill’s is made from flat sheets of metal that are cut, shaped, and formed into three-dimensional objects. Each piece is made from a single sheet of silver delicately hammered into a fluid movement; a technique that exploits both the flexibility and the rigidity of the metal.
His work is remarkable for its use of form, moving beyond the traditional bowl shape upon which most silverware is based to create anticlastic curves. The word anticlastic describes a form based on opposing curves which is best, if mundanely, compared to the shape of a Pringle crisp. His Two Piece Flowing Curves Candelabra has a lightness to it, and a flow of movement. The candles, whose light has a reciprocal arrangement with the reflective metal, seem suspended in mid air, set into tapering holders that look almost as if they’re melting. Gill’s sculptural Vase Form is an expansion on the traditional concept of a silver vase that holds flowers. He has created a small and staid silver vase, and filled it with resplendent flowers and budding flowers in silver and gold-plated silver.
Gill is also significant for his Free Form series, in which the sheet of silver is scored and folded around itself into volumes that have a more geometrical feel, often loosely based on triangular shapes. In a chess set, made to commission, the white pieces have silver’s traditional shine while the black show the darker shade of oxidised silver. The board of the chess set, measuring 512 x 512 mm, was made by the violin-maker Michiel de Hoog.

This is the work of an artist who has come to grips with his medium and is at the stage of maturity where he’s ready to have a little fun with it. ‘I’ve got the hang of controlling and moving the metal. I can push beyond the technique. But there’s an element of serendipity about it. You don’t always know how it’s going to go. You never know if a piece is going to work until you make it.’



In 2004 Gill was the recipient of the ‘Excellence in Metal’ award at the Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show, the first non-American winner in the twenty-eight years of the show. From that he was invited to show at SOFA (Sculptural Objects Functional Art) New York and Chicago. His work is in some of the most important collections of Irish silver – the National Museum of Ireland, the Company of Goldsmiths, the Department of Foreign Affairs Embassy collection, and the collection at Number 10, Ormond Quay. Gill is planning a solo exhibition for the autumn in the Designyard Gallery, Cows Lane, Temple Bar, and can be contacted at www.seamusgill.com.