Master of the grain

Seamus Cassidy creates bowls and furniture but also vibrant, contemporary sculpture. Is he a craftsman, an artist or both?

LATE INTO THE NIGHT the artist works on in his studio. The light outside is fading; the sky outside has become blue black. A large piece of burr elm has now been reduced to a mysterious shadow. The only sounds in the studio workshop, formerly a stone barn, are the murmur of the lathe, the ticking of a clock. The inherent movement of wood during the working process is a crucial factor.

“Even the slightest movement – and wood is always shifting, however slightly – during the working of those abstract pieces will affect the fine detail,” says Seamus Cassidy, winner of multiple RDS Craft awards. “You can’t leave it; you’ll lose the concept, it will change. You don’t notice the hours passing.” His studio space, dominated by a window in the south gable, is an open working environment where functional and traditional pieces are juxtaposed with Cassidy’s distinctive sculptural art work and exhibition pieces.

There is a powerful sense of the old and the new; his large platters and deep elongated vessels, several of which are dramatic variations of medieval drinking tankards, look to Ireland’s archaeological heritage while also suggesting sleek, graceful modernity. His approach to design is constantly evolving. In common with sculptor Imogen Stuart, Cassidy suggests an element of the medieval in work that is vibrant and contemporary. Shape and form intrigue him. “Wood is tactile, organic, living and lives on when it is worked. I always liked the idea of it as an exciting, immortal material.”

Is he an artist or a craftsman or both? He responds to the question with the smile of having often been asked to define himself. “Wood turner, furniture maker, artist, craftsman . . . I’m all of them. I’m still learning the many aspects of woodturning. I’ve learnt the craft of making, the skills, and I feel that I have arrived at the art. When I’m making a piece, whether it is functional or abstract art, I call on the traditional craft techniques I’ve learnt as well as the modern ones. Most important of all is the belief that I am always making something to hand on, something that will endure.” Commissions for specially designed furniture allow him to exercise his craft, and they also finance his abstract collector pieces. “With wood because it is so beautiful, you are making something that is useful and is also beautiful, that’s very satisfying.”

That ongoing debate – whether a woodworker is a craftsman or artist or both – is shared by potters. Cassidy agrees with the analogy of English potter Bernard Leach, who travelled to Japan in 1909 to study with master potter Shoji Hamada before combining ancient Japanese techniques with traditional English folk methods, bringing British pottery to new levels of artistry. “I think that is the key to all of this, that merging of the old and the new,” says Cassidy. He has taken traditional shapes and placed them within elegant support tripods of ebonised ash. “My theme is elevation; I want the shapes to appear to be suspended in space.” Observers have often asked him whether the ebonised supports are made of wrought iron. “They seem so surprised to hear that they are ash. Wood is so versatile.”

Wood appears to have always been central to his life. Growing up on the family farm outside Kells in Co Meath, Cassidy saw his father using traditional wood-working hand tools when making stable doors and simple, working furniture, “I still have those tools.” He also saw trees being cleared from the land and roadside. “It always saddened me; I use mostly salvage or clearance wood, and I’ve always planted trees. It’s good that an awareness of trees is finally being encouraged in Ireland.”

Although an eldest son, he never wanted to farm and trained as an architectural technician.Design-drawing came naturally to him. “Draughtsmanship is very important,” he says, in his understated way, mentioning that great art often comes from an understanding of the basics. “I think that to make a beautiful work of art depends on being able to make it well in the first place.” He designed and built his house with its dramatic blend of stone and timber. On a desk in his studio are the neatly executed drawings of some of his exhibition pieces.

How did a passion develop – by 1996 – into a vocation? “I wanted to be able to make things; I’ve always enjoyed making things.” Cassidy recalls wanting to learn how to turn some feet for a piece of furniture. “I also wanted to make beautiful door knobs.” After attending an evening course “once a week for 10 weeks”, he discovered that he loved working with wood. Cassidy’s art has matured through his skill, his pieces are perfect, yet their magic lies in his subtle daring as expressed through his use of textured, scorched and bleached timbers, and the fact that he often introduces leather, glass, gold leaf and insets of contrasting woods.

“After I’ve finished something I like, I tend to keep it, return to it and study it. I don’t tend to sell them until I feel I’ve absorbed the shapes and considered future possibilities.” Selecting a piece of wood marks the beginning of what is for him a series of journeys. “I never lose sight of the tree as source; I can see the finished piece in an off-cut when I first hold it. Although after the seasoning this can change, and I plan the piece differently.”

Every wood has its own personality. Some are better to work than others. Many of his finest pieces have come from his favourite wood, elm. “I’ve never seen a living elm,” he says. Its rarity may add to its allure, but Cassidy knows the wood the way another might hum a piece of music. “It’s the darkest of the native hardwoods.” He explains the wonders in its unique, contorted grain. “There is something wonderful,” he says, “about the grain of elm. The burr elm is even more dramatic.” He also enjoys the beauties of the hawthorn: “it’s a lovely, creamy-textured wood, works beautifully and, like most fruit woods, working it is a bit like shaving butter.” Based in the Boyne Valley, near Newgrange, Cassidy is well aware of the folklore and superstitions surrounding the hawthorn, the preferred tree of the fairies, to be touched at one’s peril, and he tends not to seek the wood out.

Standing in a group along one wall of the gallery area off his workshop are some exhibition pieces, including his RDS-winning pieces. The vessels made from polished elm are mysterious, dramatic and elegant. They are different yet testify to his distinctive style. “I want to take the bowl off the table and place it in the air,” explains Cassidy. Other powerful shapes fill the display cases, including a magnificent platter made from cherry wood with leather lacing tracing a natural, undulating path in the wood grain. Artist, craftsman, both, and more. He is content in his art and the craft that has inspired it. “I am protective of the word ‘craftsman’. I feel it is often undervalued, which is short sighted and misses an important connection,” he says. “The craft is there in the art.” And his art, an extraordinary, subtle, sophisticated art, is elegantly, gracefully present in his craft.

Seamus Cassidy: 041-9825032 or 086-2430965