Sterling work by Irish jewellers

JEWELLERY:A new breed of designers is changing Irish jewellery. Deirdre McQuillan profiles four very different master craftspeople, writes DEIRDRE MCQUILLAN

DES DOYLE

Des Doyle likes to compare making jewellery to gardening. They are his twin passions. He likens the arrangement of form, colour and proportion in each as coming from a similar impulse. His latest jewellery collection in 18ct gold draws from the natural environment that surrounds him in rural Kilkenny, and a mixum-gatherum of shells, seeds, pods, sticks and flowers always lies at his elbow on his work desk.

“I always wanted to be a jeweller,” he says. “I made my first pieces from pebbles and tiny twigs. My dad was a skilled cabinetmaker, my brother trained in ceramics and I was always drawing as a child.”

He started his training in Kilkenny and polished off his apprenticeship in Germany and London. One of his most significant working periods was with the dynamic Australian sculptor and jeweller Sarah Harmarnee at Alexander McQueen in London, where they worked together on pieces such as face veils and African horns for the late designer’s catwalk collections.

“She had an incredible level of finish. I learnt from her about finish, about integrity and about detail; that everything you do has to be absolutely perfect – that was a great experience,” he recalls.

That striving for perfection informs every single item he makes. His pieces for the National Museum in Collins Barracks, a big collar and bracelet, for example, were fashioned from a sheet of gold, each in its own particular way.

“That was a turning point for me, but this new collection is another challenge,” he says. For a period on his return to Ireland 10 years ago, he worked for the Crafts Council in Kilkenny, but now as a married man with two small children, “I felt that it was time to go back to doing what I really wanted.”

The collection, with its delicate chandelier, cascade or coral-shaped earrings and diamond- studded pendants draw from botanical shapes, the details painstakingly worked out over a long period of time. “I want people to say ‘I could wear these forever,’” he says.

It can take up to eight models before he is satisfied with the finished item because “everything needs tweaking, changing, even the hinges on the chandelier earrings because they need to be able to twist, not swing. Everything I make is considered, is for a special person. It is semi-couture,” he says. He works directly from his studio, but is also going back to stockists in the UK such as Electrum and Harvey Nichols.

Working in gold, which has doubled in value in one year, has its own challenges. Mistakes can be expensive. “It takes real skill to work with 18ct gold. You can’t mess up with it. But I have a lot of clients looking for gold, and what they have got in terms of value is still there. These are luxury products, but jewellery is a competitive landscape and for some it is a race to the bottom. There is no integrity to that product and it is not where I am coming from. In my work there are no skulls, no crossbows, no feathers, no bling. It’s quiet, and I would say more personal and poetic.”

See desdoyle.com

DEREK McGARRY

Derek McGarry’s abstract flower pendants and brooches, one of which was presented to Queen Elizabeth on her recent state visit to Ireland, have been developed using state-of-the-art computer technology and innovative materials. Produced in coloured resin, sterling silver, machined aluminium, magnets and rubber, these forms, with their complex structures, would be otherwise impossible to create using traditional jewellery hand-skill processes.

McGarry, who has had numerous solo exhibitions and whose work can be seen in the National Museum, pioneered Ireland’s first wax prototyping service bureau at the National College of Art and Design. This allows students and staff to work with clients from the jewellery manufacturing industry.

A studio designer, originally from Belfast, he started his design and teaching career in California. He is currently deputy head of design at NCAD and has been instrumental in forging these kind of academic design partnerships and links with industry including an extended and productive association between staff and metalwork students with Newbridge Silver.

Starting with a three-dimensional digital design file, the technology behind his jewellery develops as follows – a three-dimensional form from the file is printed using rapid prototyping technology. The file can then be used to make the jewellery designs in a wide variety of sizes, materials and colours. McGarry then completes the work by hand using traditional jewellery techniques. He argues that the designs cannot only be worn on the body, but can be enlarged dramatically to adorn architectural environments, interiors or natural landscapes.

“The junction between traditional craft and new technology brings a creative freedom that presents new horizons and endless design possibilities. It is a liberating and challenging place to work,” he says.

Prices for his small, colourful jewellery collection start at about €270 and go up to €2,000.

For further details contact him at mcgarryd@ncad.ie

SADHBH McCORMACK

“My jewellery is about empowerment, it’s about something you put on your body that changes your emotions. It’s a survival technique, it’s protection,” says 27-year-old Sadhbh McCormack, a talented Irish designer from Dublin who graduated from NCAD in 2007 with a first-class honours degree and has just completed an MA in jewellery at the Royal College of Art in London. Working in gold-plated brass, perspex and silver, her work is bold and adventurous, using adornment in a modern way.

She is the daughter of the artist Jane Proctor, and says she always wanted to be a jeweller. “I learnt a lot at the RCA. I experimented with a lot of materials and media. They break you down at the school and you have to build yourself up again, so I got a stronger sense of myself and what I wanted to do – which is to design for the catwalk.”

Already some of her pieces have attracted the attention of London stylists and have been photographed for Dazed Confused. “I think the way jewellery is being worn is changing. It is less about the materials and more about the wearer and how it is worn and how adventurous you are in the way you wear it. In London it is in a hybrid position, moving away from the craft element and going into video, photography and fashion. It is hard to be a jeweller here at the moment,” she says.

Designers she admires in particular are deconstructionists such as Martin Margiela and Yohji Yamamoto and also the hand-beaded geometric jewellery of London designer Fiona Paxton. Her plans are to work as a designer for high-street retailers Reiss and Topshop, but eventually she would like to set up on her own. She has already proved her commercial strength; while a student at NCAD she won the Young Designer of Year competition in 2006 and her collection was put into full production, in a limited edition, by Newbridge Silver, the competition sponsors.

McCormack’s designs will be included in an exhibition at Brown Thomas, Dublin as part of Fashion’s Night Out, in association with Vogue, at the beginning of next month.

See sadbhmccormack.com

SORCHA O’HORAIN

Montessori-trained Sorcha O’Horain worked as a special-needs teacher for many years, during which she started taking evening and summer courses in jewellery at NCAD to improve her skills. She finally left teaching to work with Geraldine Murphy of Saba jewellery, but “with only a certain amount of skills, I needed more technical training because I wanted to make my own jewellery.” Having been accepted for the Crafts Council jewellery and goldsmithing course in Kilkenny, she completed the intensive two-year course and was named student of the year.

“I love small, intricate pieces of jewellery,” she says. “I drove myself demented making a miniature silver teapot with a tiny teacup on each hour and kept losing pieces like the saucers and handles.”

She loves working in silver and her silver necklace is fashioned like ribbon, “because I love the way it looks like material, I love the flow of the metal from different angles. It has a gentle finish.” She describes her style as a developing one, but “it is contemporary, sophisticated and elegant.”

The course in Kilkenny is extremely demanding and one, she says, no one should take on lightly. “You don’t do it unless you are ready to give it your best for two years, but Rudolf Hetzl reminded us that you are always learning. It is great foundation because you finish with more than basic skills.”

Her work was among the pieces displayed at the RDS National Crafts Competition last year and featured in the recent Graduate Jewellery Exhibition at the National Craft Gallery in Kilkenny.

She now intends to move to Sligo, her father’s home town, where she hopes to get employment with a jeweller. “There are jobs out there, but you have to be prepared to get more experience and practice – it could be doing repairs, where you actually learn a lot, and it could be with manufacturers, where you learn how to cast and clean up. You will be lucky if you get to work with a maker and some day start up on your own.”