Eoin Lyons meets three collectors who decorate their homes with the objects of their passions: religious icons, glassware adn elephants
RELIGIOUS ICONS: The windows of Graham Cruz's apartment on Meath Street in Dublin looks onto a church, but inside his four walls there are far more religious icons than there are across the street. There are four foot statues of the Virgin in the windows, holy water bottles and Virgins on top of kitchen units. Church candles sit on counter tops, there are car air fresheners printed with 19th-century paintings of Christ, trays with the Virgin on them, and so on.
The bathroom walls have been covered with crucifixes, rosary beads, and more pictures. In addition to the decoration of his home, Graham has a tattoo, from his upper thigh to his calf, of the Virgin of Gaudelupe. This Mexican Virgin is his favourite.
"I started to collect this stuff before I moved to this apartment, so the view onto the Church is accidental. I don't really know where comes from, it just kind of happened. I'm not religious in any way. I get them everywhere - Italy, Greece, Mexican craft stores in New York, charity shops. Now friends bring me back things. It's not blasphemous in any way. I collect these things because I find the imagery really beautiful. That's it."
ELEPHANTS: 'I saw the first elephant I wanted when I was seven years old," says Jane Williams, who once ran an antiques shop on Kildare Street. "I went to an auction at Birr Castle with my mother, and there he was - a tiny jade elephant. He was beautiful, and he sold for £1. I could have bought it, but didn't pay attention at the auction.
"A short while later I was on Grafton Street with my mother and saw him in a shop window for sale at £10. My mother said that if I wanted him, I had to pay for him myself. No amount of bargaining would make the owner bring down the price, but he promised to keep it for me until I had enough money. I saved every penny I got. It took three years! That's how it all started. I don't know why, but I love that little elephant."
This was the beginning of a fascination with elephants that has taken Williams to Zambia, Malaysia, Botswana and the Far East. "They're a very family-oriented animal, with really no predators other than humans," Williams says. Her obsession ("It's a disease, I can't resist.") with the animal is reflected in her Ballsbridge home. Two herds of ebony elephants sit in corners of the dining room; there are elephant-shaped cushions; rugs with images of elephants; paintings of elephants, and wherever there is a ledge or flat surface, there's an elephant statue or ornament - about 1,000 in total.
Some are not worth very much, but have an interesting story behind them (a papier-mâché oriental one belonged to Hilton Edwards), and some are quite valuable.
Williams has other collections too - buckles, 1920s handbags, bookmarks - and says, for her, the pleasure of collecting is mostly driven by her wish to leave a collection of something to each of her 14 grandchildren. Lucky is the one who gets the elephants.
GLASS: 'Every collection begins with one thing. Wine dealer Dennis Byrne's interest in glass started when, as a young child, he noticed a Georgian finger bowl in his parents' house. "It was very plain, with three horizontal bands. I wondered what it was that made it so appealing. I couldn't reconcile its simplicity with its beauty."
Growing up with a few good pieces of glass gave Byrne an early awareness of what antique glass should look like, but his home in Newcastle, Co Wicklow also holds modern glass from the 1920s through to the 1960s, and very contemporary abstract pieces. His is one of those collections that makes you wonder what he will do with it all: box after box of the stuff fills the garage; open a kitchen press and you'll find 15 decanters. There are 500 wine glasses, and a room is currently being converted to display the more interesting bits.
Byrne describes his taste as "middle-class with a passion". What he means is that although everything he has is perfectly tasteful, he likes things with a charge that takes them beyond the ordinary. An interesting old beer bottle sits amid the chaos, alongside a sweep of modern Czech glass sculpture. "Some are worth a few quid," he says, "and some nothing at all. It's not my intention to have a valuable collection; it's my intention to have nice glass. If I spend €5 on something, I might get more pleasure out of it than something else that cost a fortune."