One Good Turn
Woodturner Liam Flynn, who has often showed an effective combination of creative genius and organisational capacity, has been awarded the first-ever Crafts Council of Ireland bursary. Flynn was awarded the bursary of e8,000 at the opening of the Collectors event at Limerick’s Hunt Museum. The bursary, which has a fund of e20,000, is intended to release recipients from their usual commitments so they can invest in the creative development of their craft. Flynn is planning to use the bursary to attend an eight-week residency in Philadelphia: the International Turners Exchange programme organised by The Woodturning Centre. Work produced during the residency will form part of an exhibition and conference titled allTURNatives: Form and Spirit. Flynn also hopes to attend the biannual Emma Lake Conference, a week-long collaborative event, held in Saskatchewan, Canada, which attracts up to 100 interdisciplinary artists from around the world.
Liam Fynn is also the curator of a new exhibition, Tracing the Line, which runs from 7 April – 28 May at the National Craft Gallery, Kilkenny. The exhibition explores the formative influences on Irish woodturning and features both historical pieces and new work. The new work comes from renowned makers who have helped shape woodturning in Ireland, including Jim Partridge, Ciaran Forbes, Ray Key, David Ellsworth, and Maria van Kesteren.
 
Grennan at the Gallery
The promising young jeweller Clare Grennan graduated in metalwork from NCAD in 2002. Her final year show, a range of accessories based on military and airline design, was well received in the annual RDS national crafts competition in 2003, winning several awards. Grennan was one of six short listed for the annual Golden Fleece Award (2005) and is currently working from a studio off Dublin’s Thomas Street. ‘I’m concerned with creating a style of jewellery which combines fashion and technical ability. My work is constructed mostly from silver, resin and other plastics; I’ve also begun experimenting with digitally printed Perspex and laser-cut silver, which I hope to incorporate into my work to create a very graphic look. I’m also researching a range of quirky jewellery based on Irish souvenirs and postcards; however, this is in the very early stages!’ Grennan’s work is available from the National Gallery of Ireland, and from the Saturday market at Cow’s Lane, in Dublin’s Temple Bar.
 
More than Metal
An exhibition entitled More than Metal – 21st Century Jewellery will be on display at the Ulster Museum until 21 May, featuring the work of Lesley Strickland, Jane Adam, Sarah King, Deborah Fraser, Ann Boylan, Marlene McKibbin, Sonja Landweer and Katy Hackney. All these jewellers use non-precious materials such as aluminium, acrylics, plastics, rubber, and Perspex, sometimes combined with metals like gold, silver and steel, to create contemporary and beautifully crafted jewellery. Marlene McKibbin, first known for her ground-breaking use of acrylics in the late 1970s, has since developed her interest in the materials used in technology to include elements of stainless steel, with which she has combined gold and silver in her recent work. Deborah Fraser’s interest in primitive jewellery can be seen in her current work, where she uses soft textured rubber neckpieces pierced with slivers of gold and silver to striking effect. The dramatic and tactile pieces of Anne Boylan include light reflective material – normally worn by police and ambulance personnel – laser-cut, shaped and mounted as rings, brooch, and necklaces with 22ct gold.
 
New Design Awards at the RDS
A design event to look forward to, Interior Design 2006 will take place from 18–21 May at the RDS. This is the second year of the event which aims to focus on excellence in design and interior design concepts, to promote good design solutions, and to offer Irish designers a professional platform to introduce and market their work. Three prizes will be awarded during the show: Design Award 2006 for an innovative design or product; Student Award 2006; and Style Award 2006 for outstanding design in restaurant or hotel interiors. In keeping with the international design fairs, the programme will include an informative lecture series – last year’s speakers included Joanna Quinn, curator of Kilkenny Design Workshops 1965-1988, and the internationally known rug maker Jan Kath. Exhibitors will include leading design-led companies such as Duff Tisdall, high-end designer makers like Michael Bell, practitioners like Feng Shui consultant Pat Duggan and Jem Textiles, and those who offer inventive products, such as Imagine Wallpaper.
 
Maria Cardenas at the Craft Boston Show
Fashion designer Maria Cardenas, who works from her studio in County Down, is one of only four non-US based designers to have been invited to exhibit at the prestigious CraftBoston Show, which runs in World Trade Centre, Boston, from 31 March – 2 April. A third generation tailor and designer who specialises in occasional wear for women in Irish linen, Harris tweed, lace, silks, satins and velvets, Cardenas welcomes the opportunity to seek buyers from the upper end of the American market. ‘Because of the high design content of my garments and the use of the very best raw materials and fabrics, my products are expensive to create. The US market is an area I would like to develop because the expectations for quality are so high.’ Cardenas recently featured in BBC Northern Ireland’s ‘Inside Out’, with models showing her garments against the backdrop of the looms in the Irish Linen Museum, near Belfast.
 
Forty Shades of Green at Farmleigh
Farmleigh Gallery, which opened in September 2005, exemplifies the benefits of finding new uses for old buildings as Gerry Cahill Architects and the OPW have transformed the estate’s former cowsheds into a contemporary gallery space. The gallery has already played a part in creating a public and cultural dimension to the residencies of visiting Heads of State. During the visit of the Bulgarian President in December 2005 a photographic exhibition showing the Treasures of Medieval Bulgaria was mounted for public viewing. It is planned that this international cultural engagement should be continued. In the meantime the distinctively Irish ‘Forty Shades of Green’ will be on view in Farmleigh Gallery from 15 March – 16 April as part of the St Patrick’s Festival. It will afford visitors a second chance to see this remarkable exhibition, having shown previously in the Lewis Glucksman Gallery in Cork in early 2005. Curated by Brian Kennedy, the exhibition showcases some of Ireland’s finest artists and craftspeople who have moved traditional crafts forward in a contemporary way.
 
Traces at the OPW Headquarters
Three inspiring Irish artists are joining forces for a unique show for the launch of Women’s Week. ‘Traces’, an exhibition of new work from architectural glass artist Michelle O’Donnell, textile artist Liz Nilsson, and mixed media artist Angela O’Kelly will be on display from 2-15 March in the new Atrium Gallery at the OPW, St Stephen’s Green, Dublin. Liz Nilsson takes inspiration from her native Sweden with ‘traces’ of everyday textiles from her childhood, tea towels and table clothes, for her textile collages: ‘it’s life through textiles, call it the fabric of life.’ Angela O’Kelly, who loves to take things out of context, is super-sizing her distinctive work with paper and metals for dramatic interactive wall pieces. And Michelle O’Donnell will unveil her glass ladders and cobwebs in a show that will allow her room for personal expression. The artists decided to curate the exhibition themselves as ‘there is no gallery in Dublin dedicated to showing work that is on the border of art and craft. One of the best things about this show is that we are both the curators and the artists’.
 
Made For America Award
Breda Haugh has been announced the winner of the Made For America Design Award 2005. Her winning entry was a sterling silver carved spiral
pendant entitled ‘Spiral Fragment’, and as part of her prize Haugh will sign a contract with the Dublin-based jewellery company, TJH Ltd, to manufacture the winning piece. The Made For America Design Award is jointly sponsored and organised by The Crafts Council of Ireland and The North American Celtic Buyers Association to celebrate the very best in Irish Celtic design and craftsmanship. The purpose of the award is to stimulate and promote new product development for the American Celtic market. Previous winners include Irene McBride of Discovery Glass (2002), Ciaran O’Conboirne and Jenn Fitzgerald of Celtic Clays (2003), and Clarisse Weisser (2004). Like the previous winners, Haugh will travel to the Celtic Marketplace Trade Fair, Chicago, to introduce her collection to American buyers.
 
Showcase 2006
Showcase 2006 at the RDS remains an interesting, if bulky, show with a strong creative contingent. The Source aisle of makers stringently hand picked by the Crafts Council continues to work well, although those with an interest in new work must resist the temptation to stay on this aisle alone. There’s a lot more of interest out there, including the winner of the best overall new product in the show, Mel Bradley, who uses textiles in an interesting and innovative way. Her Allium is a standard lamp based on a flower form with a shade of moulded silk organza, muslin, tangle tuff and seeds forming a sculpted pod over a contemporary base of aluminium and hand-turned bleached sycamore. This year the Crafts Council put together a new and useful display, The Lifestyle Trend Area, compiled by Ann Kennedy to show craft, all of which was available at the show, displayed according to current and anticipated lifestyle trends as predicted by a trend forecasting company. The area was subdivided into specific themes – Minimal, Coast, Rustic, and Cote Sud – and attracted a lot of interest. Buyers need some help, it seems, in understanding how craft can be displayed in the contemporary home, and the Lifestyle Trend Area offered just that.
Anyone who ever loved to play with their grandmother’s button box will appreciate the range of button jewellery created by Orla Havlin for Oh! Designs. It’s a range that qualifies as designer jewellery – each piece is handmade and unique – but also within the pocket money price bracket. Havlin will also take commissions and transform your personal button collection into pieces of wearable jewellery. Havlin is not, of course, limited to buttons and is a registered silversmith with has several other ranges working up the scale. These include both more conventional pieces and interesting silver jewellery with interchangeable elements in soft coloured plastic.
Showcase also saw the return of sculptor Cheryl Brown with pieces based on animal forms that show the development of depth and edge. Fiona Kerr’s Celtic Chaos jewellery range in silver and gold features hollowed pieces, silver on the outside and pierced with honeycomb swirls to reveal the gold within. The range is elegant and has a delicious lightness that could almost have been inspired by the white chocolate Malteazer! Sabine Lenz of Enibas Jewellery introduced a range. ‘My Dream’, that intermingles silver, gold and pearls in a way that takes its lead from the charm bracelet and but has antecedents in the amulet: ‘I believe that jewellery has always been and still is a magical companion,’ says Lenz. If there had been an award for the best displayed stand it could have been given to Christine Hughes whose raw and earthy ceramics are inspired by colours and textures found in nature – stones, lava, rocks, coral, shells, turf, seaweed, twigs, grasses. Wearable textiles is an area that is showing signs of an imminent revival, with elegant knitwear from Edmund McNulty and funky inventive pieces that incorporate felting and embroidery from Karen Miknas. Ceramics from Rosemary Durr show their usual restrained powder blue chic, and Freda Rupp’s bottle vessels, winner of one of the Index Top 50 awards, have a quality that sets them apart from many of the other winners, which were selected on a more obviously commercial basis than in previous years.
 
Sculptural light features
Shane Holland Design Workshops, who design and build contemporary sculptural features, lighting, and furniture, will launch their new facility at Duleek Business Park, County Meath in March. This will give the design team some elbowroom to explore larger projects, such as the recent lighting installation ‘Big Bang’, a multi-armed sculptural piece designed for a private client in Moscow, its transformer housed in the spherical dome with an inner trim of gold leaf in homage to the Russian tradition of gold leaf on church domes and icons. Another interesting project, ‘Wire Ball Explosion’, is the fruit of collaboration between Shane Holland and artist Fiona Mulholland involving Shane’s bass guitar strings from his previous incarnation in the band Eerie. The ball of wires intersects holes in a disc of glass to produce a dynamic sculpture. On a more practical note, ‘Stule III’ is a tripod stool to take the weight off the body, without the use of footrests.
 
Japanese influence
Ceramicist Peter Fulop is influenced by the Japanese traditions in ceramics, especially the Raku technique, which originated in Kyoto in the later 16th century and is characterised by many thin layers of glaze unevenly applied and rapidly cooled after firing to enhance chance variations. ‘In this process the ceramicist becomes but an observer of the final outcomes of the surface and each piece turns out very differently giving great inspiration to the maker,’ says Fulop. ‘The container is a very primal and universal symbol in the human consciousness. In the early times the first containers were created for ceremonial purposes to represent the human body. Today we mainly use vases and containers for functional
purposes in everyday life. In my work I would like to connect and reawaken the conciseness of those primal feelings towards the objects. I try to create one-off pieces, or small series of works, with the focus on the surface and its relationship with the form. If the balance is right the lines created on the glaze by the raku technique turn into a three-dimensional landscape or a story.’ The Japanese attitude towards ceramic as a fine art form is much more evolved than our own. ‘When I stayed in Japan what I found interesting is that the attitude towards pottery is more like an attitude towards fine art. People observe each object with care, and collectors are snapping the best and unique pieces in no time.’
 
Designing Ireland
Following a successful exhibition in Cork, Designing Ireland moves to the National Craft Gallery until 2 April. A retrospective exhibition of Kilkenny Design Workshops 1963-1988, the exhibition shows the range of designs - from ceramics, textiles, and graphics, to industrial design produced by the Workshops in the twenty-five years of their existence.serene design Form follows function, but all mobile phones don’t have to look the same. The elegant little oyster phone, Serene, is the result of a cooperative effort between Bang & Olufsen and Samsung Electronics. Serene was created to enable comfortable and convenient communication, its name reflecting elegant, minimal design. Serene consists of two equal parts tied together by a crafted aluminium hinge. The display and microphone are placed in the lower shell; the circular keyboard and loudspeaker in the upper shell, with a thumb-operated wheel in the middle. The display can turn 180º so, if placed in the charger or used in table mode, the phone can function as a mini laptop.
 
Porcelain on canvas
Bernadette Doolan’s increasingly sought-after work is set to mark 2006 out as a busy year for this unique sculptor. Last May, Doolan received the important commission from Brown Thomas for the international launch of their Shoe Rooms and several private commissions ensued as a result of both this and the exhibition of her work at Art Ireland in November. ‘Being commissioned for the installation last year really saw the tempo increase significantly on many fronts. Doors started to swing wide open for me.’ Anyone who has seen Doolan’s unusual pieces will instantly recognise her sensitive treatment of colour and texture on shoes and bags. The soft textiles usually employed to create these accessories however are replaced in Doolan’s work with hand-sculpted ceramic clay and have been adorned with everything from six-inch nails to delicate feathers. Pushing the boundaries of her self-taught creative talents, her most recent work, ‘Porcelain on Canvas’, launched at Showcase Ireland in January has caught the attention of several international buyers from the UK, Italy and United States.
 
New Screen Ideas
Arroo is a new company begun by Suzanne Woods to design and manufacture room screens, fire screens, painted panels, tea trays, and a small range of complementary textile products. ‘Our current range features original designs inspired by antique textile patterns and architectural ornamentation,’ says Woods who has a background in art history. ‘The designs and colours are carefully selected to work in both contemporary and period interiors. The panels are painted with up to twelve layers of paint, and then finished with varnish and beeswax. The textiles are created from woven and felted wool and printed linen panels and are embellished with luxury materials and embroidery.’
 
Duff Tisdall Celebrates 15 years of design
Now celebrating 15 years in Irish design, Duff Tisdall’s well-established following can look forward to Italian glass, French lighting, elegant silk throws, and stunning chandeliers sourced from around Europe to compliment their elegantly designed furniture this spring. The notion of design and interior trends have changed drastically over the years, but Duff Tisdall has remained in the vangard of design-led furniture, as evidenced by the classically simple lines of their Finnish range of sofas and chairs, in particular. Duff Tisdall will also participate in the second Interior Design show at the RDS 18-21 May.
 
RIAI Assist Simon Open Door Event
The Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland (RIAI) and the Simon Community of Ireland have joined forces for a special fundraising initiative called the Simon Open Door. RIAI architects around the country will open their offices on Saturday 1 April, giving members of the public an hour’s consultation in return for a e50 donation. All participating architects are giving their time for free and every cent raised will go directly to the Simon Community. The initiative offers the public the chance to support a worthy cause at the same time as getting professional advice on a building project, whether building a house or adding an extension. This is the second year of the initiative, which raised over e20,000. The RIAI and Simon hope to meet and exceed that figure in 2006. Further details can be obtained from the RIAI website, www.riai.ie or by phoning 01 6761703.
 
Collectible Craft
The Crafts Council of Ireland’s Collectors events have struck a chord, with Irish collectors beginning to make the leap from antique to contemporary pieces. The recent Collectors event at the Hunt Museum in Limerick was an overwhelming success. The Hunt Museum bought a rosary by Marika O’Sullivan, to add a contemporary piece to its collection of historic rosaries, and an Irish collector of antique silver purchased several pieces of contemporary silver by Kevin O’Dwyer. The Collectors events will continue throughout 2006, though dates have yet to be confirmed. Check www.ccoi.ie for updates on the Collectors events

Eleanor Flegg is a freelance journalist who specialises in design