Meet the artisans

Small producers tell their stories:The end results of artisan food production might not last as long as pottery, stained-glass, woollen rugs and jewellery, but these are also forms of craft-making. New Yorker Betsy Ryan has spent her spare time over the past four years tracking down some of Ireland's artisan food producers, as well as those whose art is craft but which you won't find for sale in a shop: thatchers, dry-stone wallers and farriers.

Her 26 interviews along with black and white photographs by Jersey Walz, are now collected in a book entitled Cottage Industry, Portraits of Irish Artisans.

Among those profiled are boiled-sweet maker, Dan Linehan, carrageen moss collector Nora O'Shea, and oatmeal miller, Donal Creedon, all from Cork; as well as apple-juice maker Julia Keane from Waterford, and fish smoker Gerry Hassett from Mayo. The key to all their survival is the fact they are specialist producers: small, dedicated and mostly family-run.

They have - so far - managed to endure through strict new pan-European food-production rules. And, most heartening of all, some of them have passed their trades or similar on to the new generation. Giana Ferguson started making Gubeen cheese more than 25 years ago in west Cork. She is profiled in this book, as is her son, Fingal Ferguson, meat smoker, who makes salami and dry-cured bacon.

The artisans got into their trades in different ways. For chocolate makers, sisters Sarah Hehir and Emily Sandford, it was via a tearoom their family ran when they were children, with all of them pitching in to make cakes. For Rory Conner, who makes specially-commissioned hand-made hunting, fishing and kitchen knives, it was a far more visceral calling. "How did I get into this?" he says. "It's probably the war-like streak in young boys that got out of hand. Boys gravitate towards something to kill or hit or beat people with."

Cottage Industry, Portraits of Irish Artisans, by Betsy Klein, with photographs by Jersey Walz, is published by New Island Books at €30