Limerick: RDS craft awards

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The parallel and the perpendicular are some of the conventions on which furniture-making are based, although the Obliquity Chair, sculpted from a single piece of ash by the emerging furniture maker Enda Scott, manages as the name suggests to leave both these conventions behind. His design was awarded the RDS Award of Excellence and the California Gold Medal in the 2014 RDS Crafts Competition. The RDS Award of Excellence Reserve Prize was given to Eleanor Irwin, whose A Cabinet of Natural Curiosities, is displayed in a restored wooden table, in the manner of 19th-century museum collections. The piece is very much in the Victorian tradition in its use of trompe l’oeil as the collection of stones, plants and insects are made from cotton threads and copper wire. John McKeag, a ceramic artist, won the New Entrants prize. Mary Palmer won the William Smith O’Brien Perpetual Challenge Cup for Lillibulero, a piece of quilting suspended on a bodhran-like form. Bindi by Grainne Watts was acquired for the Crafts Council collection. Other winners included Mark Campden (see also ‘Trade Secrets’ by Eleanor Flegg IAR vol 30, no 4, 2013), Denis Brown and Eimear Conyard. The exhibition of prize winners and others will travel to The Hunt Museum in Limerick from 4 September to 10 October. The awards are run by the RDS with support from the Design and Crafts Council of Ireland.
Rds Craft Awards: The Hunt Museum
Image: Grainne Watts
4 September – 10 October