The latest collection of lighting and furniture from Shane Holland represents a new departure for the designer. It comes from the heart. The majority of his work to date has been to commission - for clients from hotels and restaurants (he did the chandeliers in Bewley's Grafton Street) to items for private clients. While he loves doing the commission work, for the first time he has created a range which people can buy from shops.

Having trained in industrial design at NCAD and University of Limerick, Shane then worked as a part-time technician at NCAD, building up his design business on the side. He has had a solid grounding in designing and making - industrial designers can be asked to make anything from the internal workings of a vacuum cleaner to a scale model of a fork-lift truck.

Shane has also made pieces for films: the guns in Michael Collins came from his workshop.

While he was constructing such practical pieces his creative side began to demand an outlet and he set up on his own. The first test of his artistic and practical side had come much earlier at school when he had to choose between metalwork and art. "I wanted to do both," says Shane, who finally opted for the former but took up photography at 15. "It was a revelation. The way you look through a camera and see things in such detail and frame them in certain ways makes you think about them much more. At first I took pictures of sunsets and the landscape but I grew up in Meath and the land was so flat I either had to get in really close and study detail or construct interesting things to photograph." He jokes that if he'd been brought up in the more dramatic landscape of Donegal, things may have turned out differently for him.

He's a great believer that, at whatever level of our consciousness, we are products of where we grow up. An Irish designer will be inherently different from a Swedish contemporary although it's difficult to pinpoint the exact cause of that difference.

Shane gets inspiration from various sources, including nature and looking at things, such as industrial machinery and haystacks in their various forms, from train windows. "Everything is made from lines, circles and curves," he says. "It's the way you put them together that counts." And the way Shane constructs pieces is extraordinary. Lights are made from various metals, wood, glass and are daring and unique yet are not so bizarre that they wouldn't work in an interior. They are easy but interesting to live with.

He refuses to follow trends. "I went to the 100% Design exhibition in London and it was wall-to-wall walnut, but furniture and interiors should go beyond trends.

"There should just be good and bad stuff. People follow each other all the time but I just work from my instincts." He's pushing the boundaries of design in this country and gracefully says that he is not the only one. "I know so many talented people who just can't afford to produce their products."

He has taken a risk with his new collection because, unlike with commissioned work, he has had to finance it himself. A light he's having made by Tipperary and Tyrone Crystal met with initial incredulity. It's an asymmetrical shape, looking like a horn, which is difficult to achieve, partly because glass blowers blow into a mould and then twist the glass. This shape can't be twisted so initially the company said it couldn't be done. Not to be dissuaded, Shane went to glass experts across Europe and eventually Tipperary gave him the services of a master blower. Shane has spent months on the project formulating various moulds in pursuit of his dream. The final mould has to be made of highly polished metal so that the glass doesn't need to be twisted.

"Inspiration comes from deep down but perspiration is such a huge part of making anything. You need to create the moulds and models to see if you like what you dreamt about. I spend a lot of my day thinking about shapes and possibilities and then I adapt it into something that is useful and charismatic."

His latest collection is made up of standalone pieces designed to work together. It includes a sofa and stool, a stark, functional, simply beautiful Rex task light, an Oscar light with a 1950s kick to it, a Stork floor light and the glass Iarc lamp, whose asymmetrical shape makes it a truly 3D object that looks different wherever you are in a room. At first the eye tries to straighten it but then its fluidity grows on you. The base is fluid too, shaped like a propeller, to go with the flow of the design.

Shane wouldn't have been able to produce a collection like this three years ago: everything he earns goes back into the business and this project has taken some financing.

"Designers can make a living by working incredibly hard and being single minded about what they are doing. You need to do something really well or not at all. You have to be able to create items that people don't have." He's certainly done that.

The new collection will be in selected stores later this year. Shane Holland can be contacted on 01-878 0580 or by e-mail at shaneholland@eircom.net.