A New Life: The Kerry town inspired a glasscutter to set up his own business. Danielle Barron reports.
They may say that Waterford is in the "sunny southeast", but for Seán Daly, the rather more windswept southwest is where he now calls home. Having relocated to Dingle from Waterford city, dedicated biker Daly is now enjoying the laidback lifestyle on the peninsula.
Daly started his working life in Waterford Crystal during the 1970s as a young apprentice, and went on to qualify as an apprentice glasscutter. He remained there for 15 years, eventually becoming a master craftsman, until the recession of the late 1980s led to many workers being laid off. He took the opportunity to go it alone.
"Redundancy came calling, so I set up my own small crystal studio on the outskirts of the city," says Daly.
Ambassador Crystal was instantly successful. However, a lot of business came from passing tourists, a fact not helped by the brevity of the Waterford tourism season.
"In Waterford at that time, the tourist season lasted from June to August, then everything shut down. What I made in those few short months had to last us for the year," recalls the father of five.
Touring around Kerry one spring while on holiday with his wife, Liz, Daly came across Dingle. Having never been there before, he says he immediately fell for the town's idyllic charm.
"I just liked the place. It was a beautiful environment and, regardless of the time of year, there were always people walking around," he says.
He did some investigating and found out that unlike Waterford, Dingle's busy season was not just confined to the summer months. So, in 1998, he "took the bull by the horns" and opened Dingle Crystal, while still maintaining his studio in Waterford.
Daly says he was strongly influenced by the rich heritage of craft and tradition in Dingle, which led him to create new patterns for his crystal that incorporated Celtic knots and circles.
At first, he commuted between Waterford and Dingle, making the 520km-round trip up to three times a week. Daly says that this meant he wasn't seeing enough of his family, nor was he committing himself fully to his businesses. "I wasn't able to give 100 per cent to anything," he says.
A turning point came in 2003 when his father, who had been living with them in Waterford, passed away. Daly sold the family home, shut the doors of Ambassador Crystal and settled full-time in Dingle, along with Liz and their two youngest children, Adam and Bella.
Home for the Daly clan is now an old farmhouse, which he came across by chance one day when returning to Dingle from Waterford.
"I came in by a back road for some reason, and about a mile from the town I spotted this place," he recalls. Having been uninhabited for 14 years, the house was in need of major refurbishment.
"When I went to take a closer look, the garden was so badly overgrown I couldn't walk in the gate," says Daly. With the house came a 19th-century bothán, or small stone building, which he says was badly dilapidated.
Daly and his wife redecorated the farmhouse and also painstakingly restored the bothán to its former glory.
"Basically we've restored it to what it looked like 200 years ago," he says. It's now a place for the couple's friends to stay when they visit.
While working on the house, Daly discovered he had green fingers, and says that he now loves to work in the garden each evening after finishing work.
Since the move, he has quit smoking and, in keeping with his new healthier lifestyle, has recently taken up hillwalking as a hobby.
Daly also found himself involved in setting up the Sister City Committee, which was responsible for the successful twinning of Dingle with Santa Barbara in California. "Even though we're worlds apart, there are a lot of similarities between the two towns. Dingle is like a smaller version of Santa Barbara," he says.
When not forging cultural links across the Atlantic, Daly enjoys long rides around the picturesque peninsula on his Harley-Davidson. Once or twice a month, he also heads back east to Waterford, and says he always looks forward to visiting his friends there.
But Daly is now fully devoted to Dingle Crystal and business is thriving. He personally designs, cuts, signs and sells each piece of crystal, accepting orders from all over the world.
"The business has really flourished. The fact that I'm with it 24/7 means that I'm really able to sell my work to people," he says, adding that President Mary McAleese has a specially commissioned piece of Dingle Crystal in her personal collection at Áras an Uachtaráin.
And, according to Daly, the move has been a success for all the family.
"The kids now attend local Irish-speaking schools, where all the subjects are taught through Irish. It was a major change for them but they're doing great," he says. "I was used to city life, and working in a big factory with thousands of people, but the lifestyle here is totally different."
It was a beautiful environment and there were always people walking around