THERE was a time – not long ago – when saying the words “craft” and “Irish” in anything louder than a whisper was liable to get you carried away in a landslide of shamrocks and shillelaghs. Leprechauns stalked the shelves of tourist shops, where the most stylish item on offer was likely to be the standard-issue báinín jumper.
Okay: maybe it was never as bad as all that. Still, over the course of – say – my own lifetime, the cultural landscape of “Irish craft” has changed beyond all recognition. It now embraces everything from Rachel Quinn’s anarchic clay figures – fired by means of an ancient Japanese technique called Raku, which means “happiness through chance” – through Geraldine Murphy’s range of enamel jewellery inspired by Aesop’s fables to Deirdre McCrory’s gravity-defying sculptural pieces in gold, silver, paper and ink. It includes furniture, ceramics, stained glass, weaving, book-binding. And these highly desirable items are not just of interest to tourists, but to us locals as well – and then some.
The transformation might have happened all by itself, of course. We all know that Ireland has undergone seismic cultural changes in the past half century. But Irish craft was given a major boost by the formation of the umbrella organisation the Crafts Council of Ireland (CCOI). The story began in 1970, when the World Crafts Council conference was held here. The following year, a voluntary body was set up with a view to raising standards in craft-making, improving the welfare of craftspeople, and advising the Government on issues involving crafts.
Some 40 years on, CCOI – currently based in Kilkenny – has more than 60 member organisations and 2,200 craftspeople under its wing. To mark its 40th anniversary it has designated 2011 as the Year of Craft in Ireland.
The idea is to celebrate the best of Irish craft both past and present, and to highlight the special place craft has in Ireland. To this end, there’ll be workshops and seminars all around the country. Come the summer, there’ll be craft months in every county. Craft ambassadors from Ireland will be appointed to fly the flag of Irish craft abroad; and craftspeople from other countries will visit Ireland for public events.
Among the latter will be the English potter Edmund de Waal, whose highly-praised book The Hare with Amber Eyesmade ceramics a hot topic on last year's literary agenda. A "forge-in" will see blacksmiths all over the country synchronising their anvils; a quilt exhibition will showcase a decade of the Quilt Guild of Ireland; next month, a seven-week series of workshops and exhibitions on the subject of "crafted creatures" will begin at The Ark in Dublin's Temple Bar.
For crafts insiders, one of the highlights of this year will be the return of the annual general assembly of the World Crafts Council to Ireland in June. Besides bringing CCOI full circle, this get-together at Dublin Castle will feature numerous craft demonstrations and exhibitions.
But what about those of us who aren’t insiders? Well, there’s never going to be a better year to inform ourselves about what’s going on in the world of contemporary Irish crafts. So if you want to do a bit of crafty name-dropping over the coming months, here’s a bit of a heads-up for you. The following fantastic four are among the young Irish craftspeople who are making their very distinctive marks on the national and international crafts scene.
Una Burke is a leather-maker who has been commissioned to create an outfit for Lady Gaga, no less. Each of her pieces is made from vegetable tanned leather, producing a soft flesh-coloured material which she sculpts into complex, yet strangely delicate, chunks of body armour. Many of them resemble prosthetics of medical braces – which is no accident, since Burke is interested in the psychology of trauma, and the way in which the body can heal while being inhibited or contorted.
Angela O’Kelly is a jewellery designer who combines paper with all kinds of media to produce gorgeous, cheeky armbands, neckpieces and scarves which draw inspiration from the colours and shapes of urban and rural landscapes. Garvan de Bruir uses timber, leather and cast metals to produce everything from a quilted leather iPad cover to an extraordinarily elegant aluminium stool – you’d be too busy gazing at it to ever sit on it, is my guess – from his studio in Kildare. And Joseph Walsh, a furniture-maker based in Riverstick, Co Cork, explores structure and form to the limit – and beyond – in his designs.
“My work,” he writes on the CCOI website, “is an expression of my values; how I see things and imagine they should be, translated into an object while addressing issues. Issues of structure, of form and of the senses, of space, light, technology and ecology; embracing what is around us and seeking its future potential.”
See how far we’ve come from leprechauns and shillelaghs?
And with a whole year dedicated to them, our craftspeople will surely continue to go from strength to strength. Touch wood . . .