Br Ciarán Forbes
Born: August 19th, 1942
Died: January 1st, 2022
One of Ireland’s best known and most accomplished woodturners, Br Ciarán Forbes died suddenly at his home in Glenstal Abbey, Co Limerick on New Year’s Day. Aged 79, he entered Glenstal Abbey in 1961 and celebrated 60 years as a Benedictine monk in 2021.
Br Ciarán’s interest in woodturning began by chance when two boys at Glenstal Abbey School brought a lathe into their carpentry workshop in 1970. “I had an immediate interest in experimenting with wood. I used to go down to the workshop during the holidays and on any time off,” he said in an interview with The Irish Times in 1996.
A fellow Benedictine monk and art enthusiast, Br Benedict Tutty encouraged him to get some training. He was teaching at Glenstal Abbey School at the time but he said “woodturning offered me an opportunity to be on top of something – which I never felt would happen in academic life”.
He went to the Kilkenny Design workshops to learn how to use woodturning tools. The Abbey subsequently bought him a lathe and he set up his workshop in the grounds of Glenstal Abbey and started teaching woodturning to the boys at the school. Br Ciarán was a founding member of the Irish Woodturners Guild with fellow woodturners Liam O’Neill and Garth May. The guild invited world famous woodturners including Richard Raffan and David Ellsworth to give seminars in Ireland.
I built up confidence in tool-turning and in understanding the exigence of the line. The visual and tactile sense is what I value most in the bowls
In the late 1970s, Br Ciarán got a grant from Shannon Development to spend five months in Raffan’s studio in Devon. While there, he learned how to rough turn bowls while the wood was still wet and the finer techniques of turning large bowls.
“I built up confidence in tool-turning and in understanding the exigence of the line. The visual and tactile sense is what I value most in the bowls,” he said in the aforementioned interview.
Back at the monastery, the 200-acre woodlands at Glenstal proved to be a wonderful resource, providing such exotic offerings as tulip trees, handkerchief trees, monkey puzzles, Californian redwoods and eucalyptus trees. He said, “One of the most exciting aspects of my work is discovering new timbers, their colours and figurings. Going into the woodsheds at Glenstal is for me like discovering valuable old bottles in an abandoned cottage.” He also enjoyed turning unexpected woods such as ivy, whitethorn and laurel.
Br Ciarán didn’t distinguish between functional and decorative work, saying that “a bowl that just sits there for you to look at and run your hand along has as much function as a salad or fruit bowl”. He first started selling his bowls at glassblower Simon Pearce’s shops in Kildare Street, Dublin and in Clifden, Co Galway. Over time, he built up a strong clientele for his bowls, including heads of state who gifted them to visiting foreign dignitaries.
As Irish crafts began to flourish again in the 1980s, Br Ciarán’s work gained more prominence. He won the Crafts Council of Ireland silver medal at RDS Crafts competition in 1980. The California Gold Medal in 1990 for a big monkey puzzle bowl was among many later awards. He also taught woodturning for three years at the Letterfrack Furniture School in Co Galway.
Another career highlight was an exhibition in the Design Yard in Dublin where well-known personalities chose craftspeople. The now President, Michael D Higgins chose Br Ciarán because he had one of his bowls. “I had to make an artist’s statement and in it, I talked about Michael D and his total integrity and the convergence of his politics and his ideals and his poetry. I wrote that I hoped that my work had a similar integrity – that simple, flowing unbroken line.”
Baptised Tadhg Eoin Mac Firbhisigh, Br Ciarán was one of five sons and one daughter of Tadhg Mac Firbhisigh SC and Marguerite Nic Firbhisigh (nee Keegan). His English-educated mother grew up in a comfortable family in Fitzwilliam Square, Dublin and his father – a native Irish speaker – was the son of a worker in Murphy’s brewery in Cork city.
The sudden death of his father from a heart attack (on the day he was to take up the position as lay commissioner in the Land Commission) when Eoin was 12 was traumatic for the whole family. However, through the generosity of barrister friends and strangers, the mostly Irish-speaking family were given their rented home in Wellington Road, Dublin, a pension, support and much more.
All the Mac Firbhisigh boys attended Gonzaga College in Ranelagh gratis. His god mother, Kitty O’Callaghan, the noted pianist, introduced him to Abbot Eugene Boylan, of the Cistercian Abbey in Caldey Island, Wales where Eoin spent many summer holidays. But the Abbot there felt he was more attuned to the Benedictines and introduced him to Glenstal which he joined on September 6th, 1961, the anniversary of his father’s death – a date deliberately chosen.
St Benedict said we are truly monks if we live by the work of our hands
Then, aged 19, he was given the name Ciarán in honour of the great abbot of Clonmacnoise. As he wanted to be a monk and not a priest, he decided against ordination.
He took his first vows in 1963 and after philosophical studies in the monastery, he went to study theology at St Andre Abbey near the Belgian city of Bruges where his appreciation for music, art, literature and landscape blossomed.
Music and singing – including Gregorian chant for which the Benedictine monks are renowned – went on to become a central part of his life. He served as First Chanter during a period when the Benedictine monks at Glenstal made several commercial recordings. Mozart was his favourite composer and the Italian mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli was his favourite contemporary singer.
A great lover of dogs, Br Ciarán’s beloved dog, Bede, was never far from his side. Known also for his open-heartedness as well as his mischievousness and great sense of humour, he would often sign off emails with Dog Bless. And although he struggled with health issues for many years, he helped many people through tough times with his quiet acts of kindness in the local community of Murroe and further afield.
Asked how he balanced the commercial aspect of his work with his commitment to being a monk, he replied, “I am unashamedly in the commercial world and am at the same time contributing to the religious community financially through selling the bowls. St Benedict said we are truly monks if we live by the work of our hands”.
Br Ciarán (Tadhg Eoin) Forbes is survived by his sister, Róisín (Grimley), and brothers, Iain, Cyril, Donal and Conall, the community of monks at Glenstal Abbey and a wide circle of friends and extended family.