For interiors, the decorative arts are like icing on a cake, the finishing touches that bring the overall look together.
It is considered an old-fashioned umbrella term for the practice of applying artistic ability and highly skilled techniques to the fabrication or decoration of functional objects, says Dónal Maguire, keeper of art and industry at the National Museum of Ireland.
“We’ve become very removed from the decorative,” laments Wicklow-based botanical artist Erica Devine, whose large-scale botanical relief plaster panels adorn the Paris flagship store of British fragrance house Jo Malone. “It is there to beautify,” she says.
And her work is beautiful, a reinterpretation of the stuccodore work that adorns many of Ireland’s premier buildings and the big houses of the ascendancy class. It is also garnering her private commissions, including a castle in the west of Ireland.
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A former archaeological conservator, who worked for the National Museum of Ireland and for the UK’s National Trust, it was in its beautiful historic houses that Devine fell in love with stucco work, a creative process that you’re not supposed to leave your mark on, as she puts it.
In her conservation work, she already had the casting, moulding and presentation skills, but her work now is in both large and small formats. The Jo Malone job required three metre-high panels one metre wide, into which she pressed the various florals. The hand-made panels cost from €8,000 each.
In her own kitchen, she has scaled down the idea and panelled her cabinets with butterbur reliefs. Her reasoning is that, traditionally, its leaves were used to wrap butter to stop it melting. A fan of soft butter, she keeps hers in these presses.
Luxury textiles
London-based Aiveen Daly is one of many contemporary Irish artists in this field flying her textural talent in high net worth homes. At its core, her work is textile art and embellishment for design and architectural projects. Our clients are in love with the decorative arts right now, she says. “Luxury craft commissions are not only a beautiful way to express clients’ individuality and style, but also profitable, sustainable long-term investments with many works appreciating in value over time. Mastery and slow, intricate processes are gaining new respect in our fast digital age.“
The commissions she and her team are asked to create often have intimate, personal narratives running through them unique to the owners, she says. “For example, we are working on an enormous fantasy meadow for a Brazilian client living in the USA, with local flowers and butterflies from their childhood hometown. This will have literally hundreds of unique, hand-carved leather components uniquely designed for this client alone.”
She takes a lot of inspiration from ceramics and jewellery and her newly launched majestic oak novasuede panels have bronze bracelet chains and little brass caps nestled in among hand-carved suede oak leaves. This is not a surface you want greasy children’s hands on; commissions start from about €30,000 upwards.
Art form that feeds on itself
“Wallpaper is something that expresses your own personality and lifestyle, and brings a lot more warmth and interest to a room than plain colours do,” says David Skinner, who, in his Leitrim studio, has specialised in producing traditional hand-printed wallpapers, inspired by historic Irish house designs, for over 20 years.
The craft of making things is what draws him in. “It’s the continuum of design and patternmaking, an art form that feeds on itself. There is a small number of patterns, but the ways they can be replicated is like a kaleidoscope.”
His work hangs in Carton House, Co Kildare, and in the nursery of Muckross House, Co Kerry. He recently designed a paper for the dining room walls at Ballymaloe House, based on a pattern found at nearby Ballinterry House, Fermoy, one-time home of actor Hurd Hatfield, who won widespread acclaim for his role as the ageless anti-hero in The Picture of Dorian Gray. He was introduced to Ireland by his friend, the actress Angela Lansbury, who had a house nearby. She liked to dine at Ballymaloe.
Skinner’s Ardmore pattern, a delicate gilt damask, inspired by a print found in Lyrath, a house near Kilkenny, will appear on the small screen this summer. It will be shown in a scene set on a luxury transatlantic liner in season three of HBO’s The Gilded Age. A hand-printed roll costs €200.
Noel Donnellan’s vessels recently showed at Collect, the international art fair for contemporary craft and design held in London. The mechanical engineer retrained at the Van der Kelen Institute in Brussels, and his skill as a decorative paint artist has seen him embellish some of the finest private homes in Europe. He also worked with the OPW on the Casino in Marino, and applied gold leaf to the drawing room ceiling at Adare Manor.
After showing at Decorex, London, he and his then business partner Paolo Bello, garnered the attention of some of the city’s best-known luxury design firms: our own Bryan O’Sullivan Studio; David Collins Studio; and Martin Brudnizki Design Studio, which did the decor for Dublin’s Ivy restaurant; and interior designer Alidad.
“People think it’s glamorous,” he says, but the high level of skilled labour wasn’t always appreciated on building sites, where another worker might lean a ladder against his hand-painted panel and destroy the effect. It was also interpreting someone else’s work.
In 2021, he made a gift for his best friend who was getting married, using clay bought in his local hobby shop in Co Limerick. The vessels are slab built with the sheets “laid out like pastry”, and pushed into a mould using his knuckles, which gives them their texture. The colours come from the paints he makes himself. Their forms are inspired by his grandmother’s three-legged cauldron pot in her home in Co Mayo. Prices start from about €3,500.
Home decor
Fine furniture maker Antonio Bozic’s burl walnut-topped Ama coffee table, has bands of black and white tinted timber on the surround. Measuring 120cm long, by 40cm deep and 36cm high, its colourway is inspired by his basenji dog. From Croatia, when he came to Ireland, he didn’t even know how to say hello in English and worked as a rickshaw driver.
From there, he moved up to a “luxurious job as a kitchen porter”, graduating to chef, and then went back to school training in furniture design at the Dún Laoghaire Further Education Institute. His piece, made by hand, costs €3,650. Further works can be made to order from his studio in Castlecomer, Co Kilkenny.
Along with Donnellan and Bozic, print maker Maria Atanacković was one of the 14 Irish artists selected by DCCOI to represent the country’s talent.
In the National Museum’s Collins Barracks building, which houses the country’s decorative arts collections, several world-class Irish names in the space, such as furniture designer Eileen Gray and stained glass artist Harry Clarke, share space with contemporary creators. Some of the names included are furniture maker Stevan Hartung; precious and non-precious metal artist Caitlin Murphy; glass designer Michelle Ryan; and silversmith Cara Murphy. There may be differences in opinion as to how these creators should be labelled.
“The main thing is to recognise and value the extraordinary skill and creativity in all these art forms,” Maguire says.
Cutting art
In metalwork, Sam Gleeson’s knives merit attention and form part of the National Museum’s contemporary collection. The knives shown, which he describes as “culinary tools that are also sculptural”, will cost upwards of €4,500 per implement.
But his order book is currently closed. As a parent of four young children, he cannot manage the juggle of creating, running a small business and managing family life. Most of the hundreds on his waiting list are content to wait until he can get to the work, but his situation shines a light on a far greater problem.
How do we support the many talents in this arena who shine for a period, but can’t sustain a healthy balance of income and home life – no matter how much their work is lauded and blows up on social media feeds?
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