Winning appeal: When Irish design meets craft

“Let the colour be the star of the show,” says Miriam Cushen of the design-led approach that produced Cushendale’s Silare mohair blankets, the luxurious, super-soft throws that won the top award in the home category at Showcase in Dublin earlier this month.

The trade fair is for both home-based and international buyers, typically retailers, and of the more than 300 exhibitors, the organisers, the Design & Crafts Council Ireland, picked out a handful of winners across various categories.

As the sixth generation to work in the family firm Cushendale Woollen Mills, Cushen could as easily have put provenance as the top selling point – and she is rightly proud of the company heritage and the more traditional products the Kilkenny firm produces. But Silare, a range of six contemporary-style blankets, colour blocked in deep stripes, she says, marks “a move away from simpler pieces”. Larger than typical throws, “to give more of a canvas to work with”, they also work as bed covers.

The blankets are 70 per cent mohair – sourced in Italy and brought in as ecru and then gently dyed in Cushendale’s own dye studio for vibrant colour with depth – and 30 per cent wool, and they got their first outing last month in New York when Cushen brought them to Shoppe Object, the bi-annual New York trade show. Strong interest, she says, came from “gallery boutiques”, those highly curated, high-end shops where contemporary design and quality tends to get higher billing than country of origin. To meet demand she is already working on new autumn-winter colourways to bring to the New York show later in the year.

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Focus on design

The most interesting products to emerge from Showcase were design-led. This is a a trend that’s being growing in recent years – maybe more so this year – and perhaps encouraged by the pandemic-enforced hiatus, which allowed many makers, including the most long established, to stand back a little and try new things.

Donegal weavers Molloy & Sons won the best product award for its Diamond Weave Blanket, a new range based, like so much the Donegal family do, on their rich heritage. This time influenced by a technique developed in the 1980s during the introduction of powerlooms – but with a reinterpretation of the design.

The blanket, with its subtle graphic design, intricate weave and rich texture, is available in six colours, “though we are not trend driven”, says weaver and designer – and the son in the company name – Kieran Molloy. “Our blankets aren’t for one season, they’re long lasting.”

Aware that there is no shortage of Irish-made blankets on the market, he says there’s no point competing “for that place on the sofa” by doing what everyone else is doing, which is where developing unique designs comes in, and that’s done inhouse by the Molloys.

In normal times, part of his year would be spent visiting customers for Molloys’ exceptionally beautiful handwoven traditional fabrics in the US, Japan and the UK, where sales make up about 80 per cent of the company’s business. The Dublin event this year gave the Donegal firm a chance to reconnect with home-based customers and other makers.

Trade show

Showcase traditionally takes place in January which coincides with several other European trade shows, not least Maison & Objet in Paris, so many buyers, particularly from Japan and the US, take the Dublin event in as part of a European grand buying tour.

The pandemic-prompted move to March this year appeared to many stand holders to have reduced the number of big spending international buyers, although there was also an online facility for those who could not make it in person.

They did come though. Doris Barsauskas was buying for MacKimmie Co in Massachusetts, an area, she says, is “best known for arts, culture, wellness” and her customers “are well travelled, exposed to beautiful products, and readily invest in quality merchandise”.

Among the makers she bought from this year were Molloy & Sons, John Hanly, Ros Duke, Fisherman Out of Ireland, Lee Valley, Aoife, Landskein, Burren Balsamics, Edmund McNulty Knitwear and Placed. She also bought – as a gift to herself – from Northern Ireland weaver Louise McLean, who was there showing how it’s done in the craft demonstration area.

This is a welcome initiative at Showcase this year, and where, as a member of the Irish Basket Makers’ Association, she was demonstrating her distinctive weaving technique. As soon as McLean finished a basket – her style has been compared to the great master Joe Hogan for her contemporary interpretation of the traditional craft – it was snapped up by makers from other disciplines, a vote of confidence if ever there was one.

“The show seemed to focus on smaller, fresh new designers this year,” says Barsauskas. “Every buyer is looking for that special collection to add to their mix.”

One of those newer designers, and winning in the new sustainability product category, was Seán O Sullivan’s Badly Made Books, the Cork city based bookbinders, printers, designers and stationery manufacturers. “The notebooks have to be sustainable and competitive,” he says of the range, which now includes notebooks made with 99 per cent recycled materials.

The trained industrial designer started the business nearly five years ago in his bedroom, before moving three years ago to the Friar Street shop. It is, he says, a niche business, driven by his interest in making notebooks in Ireland, that are also made from sustainable materials.

“It ticks both boxes,” he says, but one of the clear strengths of the Badly Made Books notebooks is their cool contemporary, often quirky design, making them as likely to be bought as much for their looks as their other credentials. These are a world away from the hairy khaki-coloured recycled notebooks of old. Stockists already include a long list of Irish crafts and bookshops; international sales are not, he says, a prime goal.

For glass maker Grace Brennan at King’s Forge Glass in Co Monaghan, her swizzle sticks proved an attention grabber at Showcase and a category prize winner. US journalists stopping by her stand were intrigued by the delicate sticks and gorgeous colours, but for her, the big win this year was meeting clients after nearly three years of not seeing them.

Her Christmas decorations and figurative giftware pieces are her big sellers in craft shops throughout the country, but these simple glass sticks, topped with stripes of colour, are a departure. The idea came to her during a Glass Society of Ireland Zoom cocktail party in the depths of lockdown, when all participants were encouraged to make something. For the artist who specialises in fused glass, the cheery cocktail accessories, which mix her superb glass-making technique with thought through contemporary design, were just the job.

kingsforgeglass.com; badlymadebooks; cushendale.ie, molloy-sons.com