TradeNames:An Irishwoman - formerly one of the first female vets in Co Clare - has carved a life for herself making jewellery in Vermont. Rose Doylereports.
Vermont, indeed all of New England, is home to artists and craft workers beyond number, a corner of the US where creativity is given appreciative time to flourish.
Many among them are Irish, talented members of the diaspora who've brought old ways of making and creating with them to this no-longer-so-new "new world". They have flourished along with their talent in a landscape of hills, valleys, rivers and lakes not all that different to the one they left behind. A more languid way of life helps, of course, and so does the excitement of winter skiing.
All of which works very well for jewellery maker Deirdre Donnelly. Born in Carlow, she used to be a vet but now, with a studio and showroom in Bridgewater, Vermont, and a second outlet in Woodstock, Vermont, she's put to the pin of her collar dealing with orders for her unique hand-crafted pieces.
Her design inspiration, the oldest of old symbols for sunrise, the equinox, the firmament, is immediately recognisable as coming from the decorative carvings on Ireland's megalithic passage cairns, notably those at Knowth and Newgrange.
While indulging her passion, "putting my energy and very essence" into her jewellery, she's done the research needed, too, discovering parallels and cross references with Irish stone passages across the world and, strange alchemy, in her own Vermont backyard.
But more of that anon. It's all a long way from what she thought she'd be doing when she was a veterinary student in the late 1970s/early 1980s at UCD. Or when she began her working life as one of the first female vets in Co Clare.
"I spent 18 months there," she remembers, "and the welcome was great. When I went out to a farm they would help me carry my things, really laid out the red carpet!"
But this was 1980s Ireland and, along with many of her generation, a floundering economy encouraged flight. During a 1984 holiday in New York she "got caught up in the whirlwind of the life there" and spent 16 years in Manhattan. Working with animals earned her a living but a holiday at home changed her aspirations.
"I went to the Or exhibition in the National Museum and was blown away by the beauty, luminosity, craftsmanship, how those people made giant collars out of gold." She pauses, still blown away at the memory. "The Tara Brooch and Ardagh Chalice: how did they ever make them without glasses? It's amazing. Truly amazing."
She'd always, she says, been good with her hands - "I'm a pretty good surgeon" - and, holiday over, it seemed a natural enough progression to enrol in the Jewellery Arts Institute on New York's Upper West Side. She went on working as a vet while she studied there for four years.
"They taught ancient goldsmithing techniques, and more, and I was making jewellery all the time, selling it to friends and people I met."
Then, one winter, she went to Killington, Vermont, to ski and met the man who would be her husband on a chairlift. Daniel Madden is from Connecticut and a ski instructor; Donnelly is herself an accomplished skier. She sold her New York apartment, moved to Vermont and began the business of making hand-crafted jewellery her life's work. In short order she got herself "juried", or passed Vermont's competitive selection process to allow artists/craftspeople to present their work in the state's most prestigious galleries, held a number of one person shows and began selling her work across north-east of the US, Ireland and even, on occasion, selling to Hawaii.
A change in design direction came when she attended a workshop in Peter's Valley, New Jersey,near the Delaware River. It was given by master goldsmith Harold O'Connor who, she says, "opened my eyes to a whole other world of metal smithing. It's quite amazing what you can do, the textures you can bring to a small piece of metal or gold to make a ring or bangle."
She is, she says, "very partial" to her Irish heritage. "It's why I've always used Celtic art and symbols as inspiration. Newgrange really resonates very deeply with me. I've done a lot of research on symbols."
She produces books and drawings: "There are so many interpretations of the spiral, for instance, which recur, with symbols for the sun, moon and stars, repeated worldwide. For the Navajo Indians the spiral is a whirlwind, for example. The signs and symbols of ancient astrology are universal and are pretty much what I use - there's endless inspiration in the hundreds of different kinds of sun symbols alone. Dr Barry Fell, who has written about America BC, has found a lot of ancient, stone chamber sites here in the US. He claims there's evidence of Ogham script in South Africa, all over western Europe and South America."
Her enthusiasm's infectious, its practical application all around us in displays of her jewellery.
It's a lazy, snowy Vermont Sunday in Bridgewater. Lazy for some - Donnelly has already been on the slopes, spent an exhilarating two hours skiing. She loves the lifestyle; would ski all year round if she could. Customers drift into her second-floor studio-showroom.
"Everyone who comes in has kind words about Ireland," she says, "either holiday memories or about wanting to go there."
As a space, the Bridgewater studio/showroom is becoming too small for her growing business so she's about to acquire and expand into the adjoining studio. Most of her pieces are one-of-a-kind, "though I like to keep a record of what I've made over the years, to see the transformation and change".
Things are growing so fast that she's recently had to hire a book-keeper as well as someone to look after her website. "Running a business involves lots of extra work," she's found, "and I want to concentrate on making jewellery."
She and husband Daniel are in the process of building a house in south Woodstock. They bought the 10-acre site five years ago and had to blast out the side of a hill to prepare terrain for building. Their reward is a pond by the house for winter skating and summer swimming, breath-taking views across a valley and their very own ancient stone chambers.
"It's a mystical place," she assures, "with 2000 BC stone chambers I didn't know were there when we decided to buy. The owners told me after we'd bought."
Donnelly is part-owner, with 12 other artists, of an artists' co-operative in a one-time linseed oil factory in Woodstock. An old stone building, it has a wall of windows overlooking a brook, opened last July and is already attracting notice locally and internationally.
This year, though her best so far, is causing her to rein things in, a little. "I can see how I could go further," she says, "and further still, but I don't want to get too big, to a point where the quality of my life could go down the swanny."
Which is not to say she's slowing down. In her new "Rock Collection" each piece of jewellery mirrors the shape of one of the giant granite rocks at Newgrange, each piece hand-made in silver and 24 carat gold.
She loves going home - "meeting friends, taking up where I left off, going out west for a couple of days and absorbing it all, the scenery and kindness of the people".
Deirdre Donnelly takes postal orders. Her website is www.deirdredonnelly.com or email deirdre@deirdredonnelly.com
