THE EXHIBITION

Made in Ireland features a broad church of the freshest visual and sensory ideas and craftsmanship in Irish design with exhibitors including Beth Moran (textiles), Inga Reed (jewellery), Grainne Watts (clay) and Scott Benefield (glass). The project team of Made in Ireland – Mary Gallagher, Hilary Morley and Stephen O’Connell – explained at the opening how they hoped Made in Ireland “will build understanding of craft, design and material culture. In a desert of digital and mass manufacture, we find this oasis of making – a tangible link to the materials and traditions of this island, to its colour, its landscape and its people.”

While naturally only a small number of DCCI’s 3,500-strong membership can be represented, the exhibition tantalisingly hints at the breadth and depth of Irish design and offers an insight into current activity – and of that there is plenty, as this thriving community emerges from a challenging period into a hopeful and ambitious phase.

GROWING MEMBERSHIP

CEO of Design & Crafts Council Ireland, Rosemary Steen joined the Council at the beginning of lockdown. Despite the uncertainty of the moment and not being able to meet makers in person for some months, Steen tells me how she was struck by the lively energy and mutual support in the community of designers and makers, their standard of work and their ability to innovate and pivot to meet the challenges the pandemic presented.

Steen notes that since March 2020, DCCI saw a massive surge in membership – by 300 individual makers. There are now 66 member associations which include Design and Craft Guilds, Associations, Networks and Societies (GANS) within DCCI. A multi-layered organisation with a huge remit to promote design and craft at home and abroad (readers of THE GLOSS will be most aware of the Design Ireland cohort) DCCI offers executive mentoring and support programmes for makers and designers as well as working with LEOs (local enterprise offices) and Enterprise Ireland (if their operation employs more than ten workers) to access vital finance. Makers are also enabled to tap into state-funded Microfinance Ireland. Add to this multiple marketing initiatives, retail, education, academic programmes and outreach, and you have a complex organisation with several (well-designed) balls in the air.

MADE LOCAL

“The Made Local campaign was a big emphasis over lockdown as shoppers focused on the local, the Irish, and the sustainable,” says Steen, referring to the marketing initiative which directed shoppers to local businesses. “Shipping costs went through the roof so local shopping, which benefits local communities, became key. Our members, for their part, rose to multiple challenges, galvanised to improve online shopping experiences, develop their social media presence, literally hone their craft. For many, lockdown was the catalyst for growth and innovation. Some who had not worked fulltime on their craft decided to go all in. DCCI helped with support and advice.”

INTERNATIONAL INTEREST

Irish makers also continue to feed the demands of passionate international devotees for Irish design. “There is a new emphasis on and demand for exceptional Irish design,” says Steen; “it is now regarded as a sound investment. International buyers recognise the quality and craftsmanship of Irish design and Irish people are starting to see it too. It is fantastic to see these really discerning customers turning to Ireland for design.”

Irish-designed and made jewellery specifically has garnered interest internationally. Standout homegrown talents include Mayo-based Nigel O’Reilly, a jewellery designer of  international renown. Collectible pieces with Irish provenance have become covetable. The DCCI’s refurbishment of the Sessions House in Thomastown in Kilkenny as an international centre of excellence for jewellery-making recognised this sector as an important one. Steen mentions other makers with international followings, like Cork furniture maker Joseph Walsh, whose work is as likely to  be featured in The New York Times or Architectural Digest, as THE GLOSS Magazine or The Irish Times, and several others whose work reaches all corners of the globe. DCCI will work with the “next Nigel and the next Joseph”, and continue to ensure a vast international audience is aware of the talent that resides here. It is also wonderful, Steen says, to see major national retailers such as Brown Thomas taking care to support Irish designers, by way of annual presentations like Brown Thomas CREATE, which raise awareness internationally as well as nationally.

CREATIVE CAREERS IN CRAFT

Promoting careers in craft – not just as makers – is another focus for Steen. “Many younger makers and designers made a decision during lockdown to concentrate their efforts and make a career out of their craft. Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, with which DCCI now fosters an academic partnership, offers two new degree courses providing a golden opportunity for training for design and crafts students. The freedom to work in beautiful locations, being able to live by doing what they love most, is attractive to many young makers.”

CREATING JOBS AT HOME

Another focus is how replicate to the scale of manufacturing that Irish design now achieves abroad, at home. Many of our manufacturing processes take place elsewhere, often in Eastern European countries, or in Portugal or Spain. Steen describes how she observed a trade mission to Poland in the 1990s, as jobs in Ireland walked out the door to other countries. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could build a social enterprise and bring some of those manufacturing jobs back home?” Let’s watch this space ….

 The exhibition will run in the National Design & Craft Gallery, Kilkenny until  January 30 2022; www.dcci.ie.