Ed Walsh, formidable former president of Limerick University, has hung up his mortarboard and become a silversmith instead. Deirdre McQuillanmeets him in his Tipperary studio
It is four o'clock on a warm September afternoon and a man dressed in pinstripes is crouched over a tree stump, hammering away at a piece of shiny metal. That the person in question is a silversmith and no less a figure than the distinguished former president of Limerick University may come as a surprise to those only familiar with Ed Walsh's many other celebrated academic achievements.
Apologising for his attire - he is on his way to the opening of the Hunt Museum's new exhibition on Limerick silver - he confides that being a registered silversmith has always tended to deflect attention on his CV away from his other accomplishments such as innumerable academic posts and doctorates in nuclear and electrical engineering.
"You can spend a couple of hours hammering," he tells me as he shows me the tools of his trade in his purpose-built workshop adjoining his handsome Limerick home. It is neat and well organised with its hammers, braising trays, grinding files, pliers and engraving tools all carefully arranged in order. He is working on a silver bowl and explains how the hollows in the stump help to create shapes on the metal with sinking and raising hammers. There are similarities between silversmithing and writing, he argues, in that both start with a blank sheet, but what gives him particular satisfaction is being involved in a process that is very ancient.
Silver has a long history in Limerick, where numerous finds in the Shannon region, including the Ardagh chalice, testify to the skills of local craftsmen. Metal was mined in Silvermines from the 13th century, and Walsh points out the familiar contours of Silvermines and Keeper Hill not far from his house in this very beautiful area. His children once found a lump of smelting dross near the 10th-century ring fort in the front garden and he's amused by the fact that Limerick's outstanding 17th- and 18th-century silversmiths included a number called Walsh. His own contributions to the current exhibition include one of his much-admired hammered presentation spoons bearing the insignia of the University of Limerick, whose recipients have included the King of Spain and the Prince of Wales.
"This is the first exhibition of my work and it has moved me along like a tillage farmer moving into milk," he says as we sit in what he calls a "quandalinium" - a five-sided summer house he built near his oak and laburnum avenue. "Now I am doing bigger pieces and would like to do more enamelling work and try different techniques. There are pieces that I look at and think, how in God's name did they do that? To make a spout, for instance, is technically hugely demanding."
Silver-making was not a lifelong ambition, but just one of the many what he might call whims that have driven his life since childhood. "I was a bit of a loner growing up and each summer I had a project. One summer I learnt how to touch-type, a great advantage when it came to computers. I get a book and just do it." The silversmithing began by chance in the 1960s when he was teaching in the US. A book that he took out at random from the library to discuss with arts students happened to be on the craft. "[My lecture] was really about how to use a library and that you can learn how to do anything from books," he says, adding in a throwaway fashion that he learnt beekeeping and how to sail, another passion, in a similar manner. Thus began an ongoing relationship with the metal that exercised his mind and his energies on long fundraising trips to the US. The first silver item he made was a brooch.
The silver comes in sheets or in circular or square wire, and his ideas and inspiration come from objects seen on his travels such as an Etruscan brooch or a knitted ring from Finland "along with bits of my own whimsy", he says. "I would think about designs quite a bit on long flights and sketch things out."
One of his more curious efforts was a pair of silver earrings made from fossilised sharks' teeth in Florida. Apart from jewellery and the presentation spoons, his most outstanding pieces in the exhibition include two very fine bowls, one with fluted edges and the other in hammered silver, as well as a scroll handled toast rack.
These days he is enjoying his retirement, playing the organ and the violin and spending a lot of time sailing both at home and abroad; he has done boat swaps in Estonia and the week after we spoke had planned to set off on the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela in Spain.
Whether negotiating the tricky maritime coast at Bodrum or working on an Etruscan bracelet, such challenges connect him in their differing ways to ancient skills and problems. "I am fairly driven and you find yourself making something because there is a reason because you want to give it away or you have seen a piece you want to copy. But if you spend hour after hour, day after day creating that shape, it is hugely satisfying to have the thing in your hand and know it will be around for a long time."
A Celebration of Limerick's Silver runs at the Hunt Museum, Limerick until January 13th, 2008