Looking for chips off the old block

The works of the sculptor Edward Delaney are scattered among many collectors, but his son, Eamon Delaney, is planning to bring them back together next year for a retrospective

I have been doing research for a planned retrospective exhibition of work by my father, the sculptor Edward Delaney, due to be held next year at the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin. It has been a fascinating process of discovery and, in many ways, rediscovery, tracking down collectors of his work.

Most of Eddie's work was collected in the 1960s and 1970s, and it is an insight into a time when people collected out of personal enthusiasm rather than some of the more sterile collecting of today, which seems dictated by fashion and an eye to the auction rooms. Most of these collectors are very attached to their works and, in the case of older people, cherish their sculptures and paintings as though they were heirlooms. They behave like children with much-loved toys, taking them out and moving them around the floor.

Take Gordon Lambert, whose original donation to the Irish Museum of Modern Art formed the basis of its collection of Irish work. Surrounded by paintings and photos, Lambert, who is 84, gets visibly excited talking about his pieces, even pulling out a file on Eddie that contains old cuttings and catalogues. Above his armchair is a picture of him dancing with Gilbert and George - not an honour they easily bestow - incongruously next to photos of former taoisigh and American presidents.

Lambert was an original 1960s entrepreneur, active on semi-state bodies, and his walls reflect this. In his garden, weathered sculptures stand like hardy perennials.

Another fascinating visit was to Kinsealy, where Charles Haughey invited me to see some of his pieces. One of them was a small silver horse, next to a similar horse by Henry Moore - an apt placing, as Moore was an early influence on my father. I shouldn't have been surprised to find an equestrian theme in Kinsealy; in the hall is a bronze horse and cart, which I well remember my father making when I was a child (another aspect of these trips is to reconnect with sculptures remembered from childhood). The horse has been given pride of place on the steps of the hall, next to a marble plaque to the late journalist and pundit John Healy, itself a connection, as Healy was an old friend of my father and, like him, a former Mayo Man of the Year. Indeed, the year Healy won it (1965), my father did the trophy.

The Mayo connection is also consistent, as Haughey's other piece is a semi- abstract bronze figure of a bird taking flight, presented to him by the Fianna Fáil organisation in Castlebar. When a wing broke off, my father fixed it by taking a real bird's wing, dipping it in wax and casting it. Part of the merit of these visits is to see people's other belongings. In Kinsealy it was Haughey's Táin window, with small bronze figures of the bull, the raven and Cuchulain. It is a tribute to Haughey that he appears to take seriously our mythology and history - and is in marked contrast to the more secular politicians of today, with their almost exclusive interest in economics and the opening of pubs.

In his study, he took down a recent book by Niall Mac Coitir, about the myths and legends of Irish trees, and spoke passionately about another book, Skellig Calling, written by a 90-year-old fisherman from the Kerry islands. Haughey described it as elemental and of the island culture, as opposed to someone interpreting it from the outside. Haughey says he buys three copies of books he likes: one for the house, one for the island and one to be, inevitably, stolen. He hasn't lost the wit.

There was also a Mayo connection in the form of property developer Charlie Kenny, who doesn't just have personal works but put up public sculptures, such as Celtic Twilight, the stainless-steel column beside Mount Street Bridge.

It was commissioned as part of the Clanwilliam Court development. Thanks to Kenny's daughter, Clodagh, who now specialises in the management of corporate art, we went on a voyage of exploration and found, on the top floor of a building on Harcourt Street, an amazing welded copper sculpture called Tower Of Babel, almost 10 feet tall. This is in the offices of Ernst & Young, and it would be suitable for the retrospective.

Many such pieces have turned up in office blocks, a side effect of the building boom of the 1960s. People forget there was a mini-Tiger before the Celtic Tiger and that after the economic emancipation of the Lemass era there were opportunities for native artists, especially those who came with a European education and sensibility married to a specifically modernist, Irish style. (Eddie did almost six years of sculptural training in Germany and Italy.) Coming from a similar background to the politicians and developers, Eddie and other artists were anxious to embrace the atmosphere of prosperity and change and leave a mark on the culture and on a capital overwhelmed by an older, Anglo-Irish legacy. (This was probably also the thinking behind Eddie's modernist commissions for national monuments, such as those of Wolfe Tone and Thomas Davis.) Eddie's sculptures thus turn up in places such as Lansdowne House in Ballsbridge and Davy Byrnes pub on Duke Street.

A cylindrical sculpture hangs on the wall in Davy Byrnes, and a similar piece fills the lobby of Lansdowne House, except much larger, like an alien or praying mantis, speckled with coloured glass, with a large arm holding, by wire, a lozenge of enclosed quartz.

The doorman told me it was to symbolise the building boom of the 1960s. In fact it is a fisherman with a rod, but that interpretation is as good as any.

Part of the charm of these encounters is the enthusiasm with which doormen, or building managers, protect the sculptures they see every day, often in marked contrast to the anonymous owners. Which is just as well, for many sculptures have been damaged or gone missing, sadly not unusual for public art in Ireland.

Some people have had sculptures stolen, such as Margaret Downes, from whose country house a figure was sawn away at the legs, leaving two stumps, an echo of Eddie's Wolfe Tone statue after it was blown up by loyalist paramilitaries in 1971.

Norma Smurfit has a few outdoor pieces which she describes as part of her day. "I look at them every morning," she says. Collectors referred me to other collectors, and to other connections, such as Sean and Rosemarie Mulcahy, who showed me around their own collection, including a standing nude of Eddie's. Further along the shelves I saw a photograph of Michael Collins and Sean's father, General Richard Mulcahy, marching in slow step at Arthur Griffith's funeral, and I felt an immediate connection to a world beyond sculpture or art.

Another fascinating visit was to Gerald Davis of the Davis Gallery on Capel Street, who exhibited Eddie's work in the 1960s and was also involved in a series of prints Eddie did for a book of biblically inspired stories by the British author Wolf Mankowitz, who was living in Ireland at the time. Mankowitz gave Eddie an ingot of silver to make little figures from, but the silver content wasn't high enough for the hallmark office, so they tried to hold onto them.

An angry Mankowitz marched up to the office and banged on the desk, demanding them back.

Davis described a world of collectors and galleries, mentioning such names as David Hendriks and Maurice Fridberg, a famous art buyer who introduced Eddie's work to a wide number of Jewish collectors. Indeed, much of Eddie's work is now in Israel, as well as in London and New York, and all around the country.

Deep in the Lough Dan valley in Co Wicklow, for example, a 10-foot shepherd holds a lamb, and Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda has a dramatic sculpture commissioned by the nuns. The Catholic Church, incidentally, has been a great patron - altar panels by Eddie appear in Ballinasloe church and in Kilkenny, with flowers usually covering up the many nudes that Eddie seemed to include in his biblical scenes.

The RHA plan is to focus the exhibition on larger sculptures but also to have suggested walks to the better-known monuments, such as Wolfe Tone on St Stephen's Green or the Thomas Davis memorial on College Green, where there is also a plan to get the angels fountain working again.

A popular feature when it was originally installed - urination once again, joked the wags - it used to get filled with soap during Trinity rag week, causing the whole thing to bubble over.

Eddie was anxious to install a fountain, having noticed, in Rome, the therapeutic effect that running water could have on a city's harried citizens - something Dubliners could well benefit from now.

There is also a pop-music connection, as the angels apparently inspired the Robbie Williams song Angels. According to the songwriter, he was waiting for a taxi and thinking about his girlfriend when he dreamily fixed on the sculpture's wings.

Following up on these connections and stories has been a fascinating process, as has meeting gallery owners or art collectors in their homes. It has revitalised my appreciation for those who truly enjoy visual art and love showing it, and I look forward to more such encounters in the months ahead.